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DENTON J. SNIDER 









ST. LOUIS: 

SIGMA PUBLISHING CO., 

210 PINE STREET. 

1891. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1880, 

By DENTON J. SNIDER, 

in the office of the "Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C, 



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TABLE OF COJSTTEJ^TS, 



Book I. Delphi. 

CYCLET FIRST. 

1. Prelude , , 7 

2. Up the Mountain.... 11 

3. Entrance to Delphi . 14 

CYCLET SECOND. 

1. The New Pantheon 17 

2. The Delphic Symphony 21 

3. Serenity 21 

4. Rain on the Roof 23 

5. The Maid and the Muse 25 

6. The Maid's Question 28 

7. The Poet's Answer 30 

8. Dimitri 33 

9. Parnassian Clouds.... 35 

10. The Flight 37 

CYCLET THIRD. 

1. The Parnassian Spinner... 40 

2. Color and Song on Parnassus 42 

3. The Reason Why 45 

4. The Black Lover 47 

5. Modern Temple of Bacchus 49 

6. The Wine God and the Love God 51 

7. Conflict of Gods at Delphi 52 

ill 



IV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CYCLET FOURTH. 



1. The Saints and the Muses 56 

2. The Castahan Washers .. 58 

3. Caslalia's Horror 61 

4. The Old and the New Gods at Delphi 64 

5. Night at Delphi 67 

6. The Building of the Temple 69 

7. Delphi the Seeress 71 

8. The Foreign Shepherd at Delphi 73 



Book II. In the Olives. 

CYCLET FIRST. 

1. The Olive 79 

2. The Songstress in the Olives 81 

3. The Olive Pickers 84 

4. The Song in the Olives 85 

5. Elpinike... 87 

6. The Fountain in the Olives 89 

7. Eros in the Olives 91 

8. The Three Paths 93 

9. TheMetochi , , 95 

CYCLET SECOND. 

1. Philemon and Baucis 97 

2. Cluck! Cluck „ 99 

3. The New Garment -,.. 100 

4. TheMantiU 104 

5. The Answer of Eros 107 

CYCLET THIRD. 

1. The Greek Peasant's Question 309 

2. Gunpowder in Hellas = Ill 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. V 

3. The Folly 113 

4. The Kahokian Shopman at Delphi 115 

5. Ditto's Book on Greece 119 

6. Zalisca .,...., 120 

7. The Olives by Night... 123 

8. The Same Dream , 125 



Book III. Elpinike. 

CYCLET FIRST. 

1. Sharing the Pomegranate , 131 

2. Hymns Sung and Unsung 134 

3. Citrons of Chios .., .......136 

4. The Jaclgment.. ...138 

5. The Name Transformed 140 

G. The Draught of Castalia 143 

7. The Delphian Weaver 145 

8. The NewDidaskah 148 

9. The Delphian World 152 

CYCLET SECOND. 

1. The Rise of the Nymphs 155 

2. The Empty Sarcophagus 159 

3. Retrospection and Comfort ...161 

4. The Festooned Column 164 

5. Elpinike's Dream 165 

6. The Cure of Ennui 168 

7. Greek Mockery 171 

8. The Triumph of Eros 173 

9. Stephane 176 

10. Not Yet Ready 178 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CYCLET THIRD. 

1. All in One 181 

2. Elpinike's Horror ...183 

3. In the Corinthian Haze ...185 

4. The Delphic Mood 187 

5. Apollo and Elpinike ,..189 

6. The Old Temple Seen 190 

7. Carpe Diem 192 

8. Seismos 164 

9. The Foe of Delphi 196 

10. Castalia's Captivit}- 199 

11. The Lost Old World Regained 201 

CYCLET FOURTH. 

1. Immortality 203 

2. Renascence 207 

3. The Last Words of Apollo 211 

4. The Outlook 213 



Book First, 



Delphi. 



(5) 



ARGUMENT. 

The modern pilgrim on his way to Delphi, ap- 
proaches by the Corinthian Gulf (^called Kolpos, Bosom , 
in Greek); after landing he passes through a plain in 
which are vineyards and olive-trees, ivhen he begins to 
ascend a mountaiyi road, ivhich leads to his destination. 
He has come from the other hemisphere, from the banks 
of the Mississippi, to see and to feel what can still be 
seen and felt in a place ivhich was once the center of 
Greek Heathendom, Delphi {its modern name is 
Kastri), Parnassus, Castalia are still in existence as 
natural objects, and bring back the old ivorld of the Gods, 
strangely commingled loith the new. Kahokia, mentioned 
in the text, is not a Greek but an Indian word, being the 
name of a small quiet village, settled first by the French, 
on the Mississippi not far from St. Louis. 



(6) 



Cgtkt Jfirst* 



I. Prelude 

There! it strikes on the sands I the end, and still 
the beginning I 
Now I am come to the coast ! whither, O 
whither the way I 
Long has my shallop been rocked on the beauti- 
ful Bosom of waters, 
Rising in ripples of joy over the heart of fair 
Greece; — 
On the Corinthian Bosom, bared to the touch of 
the sunbeams 
That are wreathing its swell softly in flashes of 
gold. 
But the coquettish light sport of the sea with its 
dimples of laughter 
Quickly behind me I leave, — here now I leap 
on the shore 

(7) 



8 DELPHI. 

Where is the road through vineyards and olives 
and hills up to Delphi : 
Held in a hymn of the God, thither I pass to 
his shrine. 
From the world's other side, from the banks 
of the turbulent river 
Always rushing in rage down to the realms of 
the Sun, 
Where the vast flow of the waters doth sweep 
by the fens of Kahokia, 
Thence I a pilgrim have come over the ocean 
and earth. 
Wild is the turmoil that restlessly whirls in the 
stream of the River, 
Fierce are the insects that swarm through the 
great vale on its banks. 
But now in truth I have come to the much sung 
home of the Muses, 
Now the thing I behold when may be spoken 
the name. 
Look! the glistening heights of Parnassus rise 
in the distance, 
Over the land and the sea still they are sending 
their gleams. 
With that top for my mark I joyously start on 
my journey. 
For the way thither, I know, lies in Apollo's 
bright realm. 
First are the vineyards preparing their drops 
of mild inspiration, 



DELPHI. 9 

That put courage in hearts for the ascent of the 
mount ; 
Not unmindful I pass them, for many a leaflet 
and tendril 
Here are woven in wreaths which the young 
Bacchus entwine, 
And the vine is beginning to sip from the soil a 
sweet nectar 
Which it will hold to our lips when has been 
mellowed the year. 
Next come the Olives, now full of sweet poesy, 
in a vast orchard 
Strown all over the plain, sporting in sunbeams 
and song. 
Often I stop for a moment to snatch from the 
tip of a leaflet, 
Just a few notes of a hymn which I hereafter 
may sing ; 
And I intend every day, as long as I linger at 
Delphi, 
To return to these trees that I may breathe of 
their strain. 
Many a hearty young Olive is here full of lusty 
rejoicing, 
Many a trunk that is old, wrinkled and bent to 
the ground, 
Yet with rich fruit it is laden. Bright runnels 
of water are playing 
Round the roots of the trees, lisping a lay with 
the brink, 



10 DELPHI. 

For they are bearing the dew of the Muses 
adown from Parnassus; 
Joyous the Olives upspring to the refrain of 
the brook. 
Also the trill of the birds that are singing un- 
seen in the branches 
Joins in the laugh of the leaves tuned to the 
lay of the rill ; 
Every twig in the orchard is bent with Parnas- 
sian songsters 
Matching their voice to the clime in the new 
season of spring. 
Some of their throats are breathing the sunniest 
note of the panspipe, 
Some have the clarion's blast rousing the heroes 
to war. 
But oh behold — - in the distance there rises a 
beautiful image 
Through the long lines of the leaves, flitting 
around mid the trees ; 
'Tis the Greek maiden, busy at work, arrayed 
in white garments: 
Scarce can I rightly discern whether that shape 
be a dream. 
Into the palm of her hand each berry appears 
to be flying, 
There it nestles in glee, softly, unwilling to 
leave ; 
Nor would I, were I in its place, desert those 
embraces, 



DELPHI. 11 

In their soft pressure caressed would I forever 
repose. 
Soon a song she intones to the chime of the brook 
and the leaflets, 
Now deepest thrills can be felt through the 
Parnassian world, 
Thus for miles I walk in the musical Olives to 
Krissa, 
All is attuning my soul for the approach to the 
fane — 
To the great Delphian fane where lie the domains 
of the Sungod, 
To the Castalian fount where are the Muses 
enshrined ; 
See ! I have entered already the presence of 
Gods in my journey ; 
Hear! within me a lyre throbs in a rapturous 
strain. 



2. Up the Mountain. 

Upward from Krissa I pass on the winding and 
rock-pointed pathway 
Toward the Delphian heights, — still 'tis the 
walk of an hour, 
Easy the road is not, but gladly I grapple the 
hillside, 
Clamber about on the stones, yet with Parnas- 
sus in view 



12 DELPHI. 

Always glimmering white in the distance far up 
above me: 
'Tis a beacon of snow held there aloft in the 
skies. 
Dusk, the dark Lady, has thrown her first vail of 
thin gauze o'er the mountain; 
Still from its silvery top falls a soft splendor 
of light. 
Now she commences to lay her dim hand on the 
face of Apollo, 
Who near his Delphian home loiters there under 
the sea 
Loth to quit the abode that he loves. But look 
down in the valley 
Where the glad Olives ere while danced with 
the beams of the sun ; — 
There the black dragons of Night are creeping in 
stealth up the hillside 
Out of the valleys below that are now filled 
with their folds, 
Mid the cliffs they will soon coil around me, but 
still I trudge forward 
Dreaming of things yet unseen at the great 
shrine of the God. 
Hark ! there rise behind me loud notes of melo- 
dious laughter, — 
'Tis the maids who return home from the 
orchards below; 
All day long they have stooped in hard labor, and 
still they are merry ; 



DELPHI. 13 

Work intoxicates here, flushed with the 
draughts from the hills. 
Slower I go on my way, by that group I am soon 
overtaken. 
E'en in the dark I can see folds softly white 
fallinsr down. 

o 

But as they hear, when I greet their approach, 
the foreigner's accent, 
Quickly they start the sweet hymn while to the 
village we pass. 
So to the song of the maidens I grandly enter 
high Delphi, 
In a procession of old, like a great pomp of 
the God. 
But that rhythmical chant with its gait has at- 
tuned all my fancies, 
Now they move in long strides round the 
Parnassian heights ; 
Scarce can I bridle their gallop into the short- 
stepping English, 
Always they reach out their feet spurning my 
modern restraints. 
'Tis the command of the God, I feel I must 
march to his quickstep, 
And I must sing to his note while here I tarry 
his guest. 



14 DELPHI. 



3. Entrance to Delphi. 

What is that strain which is sung by the maids as 
we enter the hamlet? 
Some refrain I can hear throbbing by spells in 

the song. 
Sasagapo, — sas agapo — alV entrepomai na 
sas eipo; 
Thee I love, — thee I love — but I shame me to 
tell thee ; — 
Such is the version I make causing my heart to 
rebound. 
Love, then, is the sweet theme to whose music I 
march into Delphi, 
And to its beat I must step after an apron 
and robe — 
Apron of red that flames in the night like the 
fierce torch of Eros, 
Kobe as of Parian folds, white as Parnassian 
snow. 
In deep faith I follov/ the omen that heralds me 
onward. 
Gone is all my fatigue, of a new world now I 
dream. 
On my ankles so jaded fleet pinions appear to 
be growing, 
And by to-morrow methiuks they will be ready 
for flight ; 



DELPHI. 15 

Feathery-footed like Hermes, the messenger swift 
of Olympus, 
I some message shall bring down to our Earth 

from the Gods. 
Sas agapo, ■ — sas agapd — alV entrepomai na 
sas eipo : • — 
Thee I love, — thee I love — -but I shame me to 
tell thee; — - 
Their confession is sweet, it I shall take to my 
heart. 
Ila ! already young Eros is here, is flying before 
me 
Unto Apollo's high fane — both of these 
deities rise. 
Who can resist two Gods, each one of them being 
almighty ? 
I shall not try to resist, nor do I wish to 
resist ; 
Both my worship shall have as long as I stay 
here at Delphi, 
Sunlight and love are my prayer, mingled 

together in song. 
jS as agapo, — sas agapo — alV entrepomai na 
sas eip6; 
Thee I love, — thee I love — but I shame me to 
tell thee ; — 
You are ashamed then to tell what you ah'eady 
have told? 
Oh subtle Loxias, doubler of words, thou hast 
doubled their meaning. 



16 DELPHI. 

Wiles already hast put into the hearts of 
the maids ; 
For they say that they love, and yet too they 
say they don't say so ; 
What a puzzle is this which they are singing 
to me ? — 
Oh you are women, for what 'you refuse, just 
that you are granting, 
And you deny you confess what you confess 
you deny. 
Is it not strange to say what you say, then say 
yoii don't say it, 
And by concealment reveal what you declare 
you conceal? 
There — the ambiguous oracle on me is breathing 
already, 
And a riddle inspires just when I enter his 
town. 



I. The New Pantheon. 

All the Gods here at Delphi begin to assemble 
around me, 
And of some share of my life each is secur- 
ing command ; 
Each is breathing into my heart subtle need of 
his .worship, 
And there is now not a God whom I would 
blot from my soul. 
So I must build a Pantheon in which they shall 
all dwell together, 
Gods and Goddesses too, all without chiding or 
strife ; 
With the hymn I shall build it, the ancient 
material of Orpheus : 
Every stone of the fane shall be itself a new 
song, 

2 (17) 



18 DELPHI. 

And it shall move to its place in the pile to the 
sound of sweet music, 
Sung to the beat of the hymns as in the dance 
of the youths. 
See the chorus of marbles as up from the depths 
of the mountain 
They are coming with joy into the light of the 
sun ! 
All the edges drop off as they fit their tread to 
the measure. 
Like the white Graces they move to the clear 
note of the song. 
Joyous are even the stones, as they spring into 
order and sunlight, 
To have left the dark realm where Chaos sits 
in the earth, — 
Stones most deeply attuned, to harmony hewn 
by that music ; 
Each on the other doth rise, building a glori- 
ous fane ; 
Now the marbles join hands in a row of far-shin- 
ing columns, 
Kound the bright temple they move in a per- 
petual dance. 
So these hymns that I build move round my 
stately Pantheon — 
Naught but a chorus and song, all the day long 
in a whirl. 



DELPHI. 19 



2. The Delphic Symphony, 

Come, it is my desire to have you go with me to 
ramble 
Only this one afternoon dipped in the balm of 
the clime ; 
To the harmonious choir of Nature we joyous 
shall listen — 
Such as she forms for herself here on the 
Delphian hills. 
Out of the windows of rock are peering the eyes 
of the flowers, 
Wishing to see the fair world, wishing them- 
selves to be seen ; 
They make the tapestry which is now hanging 
adown from the hill-tops, 
All their bright colors you see melting to beauty 
the cliffs. 
Over them hover Parnassian bees, the merry 
musicians. 
In a thousandfold hum striking the note of the 
flowers ; 
All with variance, from the big drum of the 
bumble-bee's pinions 
To the small pipe of the fly in yon acacia's 
blooms. 
Air and sky to the melody are most deeply ac- 
cordant. 



20 DELPHI. 

They have a festival too, for they are married 
to-day. 
And they now kiss in the bridal embrace, while 
lofty Phloumbouki 
Blandly his shaggy old sides sways in the 
waves of the song, 
licave me not out, I have also my place in the 
symphony Delphian, 
For my body is changed into a many-stringed 
harp, 
Which is struck by the throbs that are sent from 
the soul of this Nature, 
Till I am one with it too, chanting the music I 
feel. 
Even crabbed old Prosy would turn to a hymn 
now at Delphi, 
And his lips be a lyre touched by the hand of 
a Muse. 
But look up, for yonder are leaping white folds 
of the dancers ; 
Youths the bright circle have formed, then all 
the maidens appear 
In a procession slow-stepping, until they entwine 
in the chorus, 
When the hymn doth arise, tuned to the step 
of the dance. 
Simple the strain, but it melts to one movement 
the voice and the body. 
And it unites with the notes which the glad 
flowers prelude ; — 



DELPHI. 21 

List I they all with the clime here one deep har- 
mony utter. 
Tuned as of old to the chords strung on Apol- 
lo's sweet lyre. 



3. Serenity. 

Any little thing pleases me now, and it pleases 
me greatly, 
For a Delphian joy softly me holds in its 
arms, 
And whatever I see, I am rocked to a musical 
measure ; 
On my path are unchained thousands of im- 
ages glad 
As I walk round this hill to the sun. Just now 
yonder raven 
Is the delight of mine eye as he doth glide 
down the vale ; 
Look at his happy high flight, yet he shows not 
the smallest exertion, 
While the deep gloss of his back sports in the 
dance of the rays. 
And to me, the beholder, reveals subtle splen- 
dors of color 
As he changes his place mid the bright play of 
the beams. 
But the thing which rejoices me most is the ease 
of his movement, 



22 DELPHI. 

Not a feather he stirs in his bold flight 
through the skies. 
Wide-extended his wings are, and still he doth fly 
without flapping; 
Simply he moves, you would say — but who 
can tell how he moves ? 
Effort appears not, lost in the triumph and grace 
of his pinions; 
Struggle no clog puts on him, lord of the 
paths of the air. 
Always from tip to tip in full swoop his wings he 
outstretches, 
Yet in repose he remains during his rapidest 
flight. 
See ! now he rises without one stroke — but now 
he is falling, 
Slowly descending beneath where are the 
Olives at play. 
Suddenly I fall with him, I start from the side 
of this mountain. 
Not a feather I stir as through the sunbeams I 
sail; 
No exertion I make in order to fly, not a strug- 
gle- 
Simply I move of myself, knowing not why it 
is so. 
Do you not see I am flown — without effort 
flown down to yon orchard ? 
A fair phantom is there guiding the wings of 
my soul ; 



DELPHI. 23 

So I fly like the raven, without one flap of my 
pinions — 
Nay, without pinions I fly, sinking away in 
the leaves. 



4. Rain on the Roof. 

Many are now the delightful sounds that are 
uttered by Nature, 
Many too are the joys that she instils in her 
tones ; 
But of all of her sounds, the one which to me is 
most pleasant 
Is the fall of the rain as it doth beat on the 
roof 
Over my head. In the day-time driven home by 
the shower, 
Long I sit with my hand under my chin, and 
list 
To its song and its dance, for its drops have 
come down from Parnassus, 
Rhythmical drops out of clouds born on the 
Muses' high seat. 
Thus they are dowered just from their source 
with symphonious movement. 
As a chorus of youths step to the pipe and the 
drum. 
I recline by the fire underneath the low tiles of 
my cabin 



24 DELPHI. 

Out of the rain's merry dash, still I can hear 
all its notes. 
Then I am led by them off into thoughts of a 
musical cadence, 
And the whole world keeps time to the soft 
pat of the rain. 
Many a form now comes up before me far dis- 
tant from Delphi, 
Out of the shadows they rise, yet in the glee- 
fullest mood; 
Many a shape that is real, and many a vision of 
poets, 
Many an image of joy — all to the beat of the 
rain. 
Fragments of life I live over again, now sweetly 
attuned. 
Though they a discord were once in the re- 
frain of my years ; 
Hopes of the future too in an harmonious swell 
overflow me. 
Every hope has its wings dipped in the rain- 
bow of song; 
Joyous I fly on its pinions far over the ways of 
the ocean. 
And the glad time of return in soft embraces I 
feel. 
Images fall to the Earth from the musical Del- 
phian Heavens — 
All have the rhythm of rain heard in the dan^ 
of the drops. 



DELPHI. 25 

But in the night-time, lying on carpets strown 
out by my hostess 
Love I to glide into sleep to the mild music of 
rain, 
For its notes wind subtly along through the 
gates of my slumber. 
Enter the palace of dreams playing soft strains 
till the dawn ; 
And they gently attune to sweet sounds all my 
memories errant, 
That through the fields of the past wantonly 
roam in the night ; 
All my hopes, all my wandering thoughts slip into 
the measure 
Beaten by drops of the rain on the low roof 
overhead. 
Struggle has fled from the soul and life is discord- 
ant no longer. 
The great universe glides into melodious 
hymns ; 
Softly in slumber the deepest I hear the lay of 
the rainfall. 
And I sleep to its notes wrapped in a garment 
of dreams. 



5. The Maid and the Muse. 

Every morn ere Apollo has touched the high top 
of Phloumbouki, 



26 DELPHI. 

From the rngs I arise, then to my worship I 

go; 

For a still morning prayer I breathe at the fount 
of Castalia 
To the harmonious forms that have their home 
in the stream ; 
And I pray them to show to my reverent eyes a 
small fragment 
Out of that beautiful world mirrored within 
the clear depths. 
Many a draught I take of the water that laughs 
from the fountain, 
Hands and face too I lave in the cool flow of 
the rill, 
But no cup will I dip for a drink from the brook 
of the Muses, 
There I fall down on my knees, prop my 
two hands on the stones, 
And then slowly my lips I press to the crystalline 
water : 
When I feel a soft kiss from a bright maid in 
the stream. 
Fain would I sink to that shape and be lost in 
tender embraces, 
Live a transparent life there with her under the 
wave, 
Or, attended by nymphs, expire on the couch of 
her mosses: 
But with a touch to her lips, quick from my 
worship I rise. 



DELPHI. 27 

For thus early are passing this way the maids of 
the village, 
Down to the Olives they pass, mingling their 
labor with hymns. 
They too take a cool drink from the stream as it 
bubbles pellucid, 
And with their finger tips moist tinge their 
fresh cheeks with its drops ; 
Then the roses come pulsing into the lilies by 
heart-throbs : 
Long I stand by the rill- — slyly I glance in each 
face. 
Thus I do every sunrise, and I am always re- 
warded 
With some image of joy that doth illume all 
the day. 
So a maiden this morning leaped on a rock by 
the wayside. 
Drew up her horse by the bit, gave a quick 
spring and a whirl ; 
For a moment she flew through the air, then lit 
in the saddle 
Like a bird on a branch — wings she must have, 
I am sure. 
Bravo I cry, and she sends to my greeting a 
proud smile of triumph. 
Then away, away, into the Olives she 
speeds 
Riding over the rocks down the steep like a bold 
Palicari : 



28 DELPHI. 

But she leaves me that smile as the fond toy of 
the day, 
For wherever I stroll, with that phantom I find 
myself playing, 
Through all my thoughts it doth wind, giving 
them color and mood, 
Though they be on the Earth's other side. Thus 
it wakes along with me ; 
But in my afternoon nap slyly it enters my 
dream ; 
There amid the absurd irresponsible throng of 
my visions 
It is swimming in glee showing the laugh in a 
mask. 
Fain would I fix its vanishing form of delight in 
these measures. 
That I might look at it oft, would even show 
it to friends. 



6. The Maid's Question 

What art thou writing, she asks me, here in the 
shade of the Olives ? 
For a pencil and book often I see in thy 
hand, 
Whilst on the paper thou makest strange letters 
in a stranofe lanojuaoje : 
Quickly they dance through a line, then they 
turn back at the end. 



DELPHI. 29 

Restlessly too thou dost stop sometimes with ii 
look of vexation, 
As if a God held thine arm from its free sweep 
to its scope. 
But 'tis only a rock that checks for a moment 
Castalia, 
Or a small pebble perchance fretting the flow 
of the stream ; 
Yet the Muse is soon there and slyly removes the 
obstruction, 
Rapidly then darts thy hand through all the 
symbols unknown. 
Now to ray fancy there bubbles just out of the 
point of thy pencil 
Words like the drops that well up into the 
Muses' abode. 
Look ! thou seemest at times to count on the tips 
of thy fingers. 
That in a measure the lines train to the tones 
of thy voice ; 
Thus like the tremulous thrill of the sea they 
dance in their motion, 
Joined in a rise and a fall led by the Graces in 
hand; 
Every word neatly glides into lines of incessant 
recurrence, 
Just as Castalia skips joyous along the same 
rocks, 
Though the crystalline flow of its waters be less 
or be greater, 



30 DELPHI. 

Though wild droplets may dash out of the 
stream in their joy. 
Read me thy words, I beg thee, e'en if I know 
not their meaning, 
Gladly I hear them move to the command of 
thy voice. 
For they have a light rhythmical tread, like the 
youths of the chorus. 
To caramousa and drum daintily stepping in 
time. 
*« Poesy's flatterer sweet, it is well thou knowest 

not English," 
Modestly then I replied, though I believed all her 
words. 



7. The Poet's Answer. 

Yes, these lines that I write are quite like the 
youths of the chorus ; 
Many the dancers we see moving along with the 
step. 
Some are better, some worse, and some may be 
said to be neither ; 
Some will fall out of time in the fierce rush of 
their zeal ; 
Some do not know yet the step in spite of the 
care of the master. 
Whatever pains he may take, they will not tread 
to his beat. 



DELPHI. 31 

Some move in time, it is true, but have little 
grace in the movement. 
Some merely walk through the dance to the rude 
stroke of the drum. 
Some are too buoyant in spirit forgetting the 
moderate me.'isure. 
Some are sluggards in gait, e'en sinking down 
to blank prose. 
But there are others — the most of them — 
beautiful youths of the chorus, 
Maidens with soft-glowing cheeks, forms of 
white grace in the dance — 
Note them, I pray thee, how freely they step to 
the sound of the music, 
How their fair bodies thrill just to the voice of 
the Muse 
Who now speaks to them out of the fount of 
limpid Castaliaj 
And they list and obey all what their Goddess 
commands. 
These make the chorus along with its hymn a 
glorious vision 
Fallen from ages of old down to the life of 
to-day ; 
In its movement it mirrors that ancient Greek 
heaven refulgent, 
Though a cloud now and then vary the sun- 
shine of song. 
Look not at those who are always making mistakes 
or are awkward, 



32 DELPHI. 

Though the master may beat vainly and long 
with his hand, 
Nod with his head, e'en stamp with his foot that 
they fall into measure — 
Every misstep that they take throbs a fierce 
jar in his soul. 
But nearly all of the youths have obeyed now, 
though full of mad frolic, 
And they follow the beat with an unconscious 
light tread. 
Backward and forward they move, then around 
the circle together, 
Many a garland they weave, out of their mo- 
tions of grace ; 
Often a beautiful youth who is placed at the head 
of the chorus 
Leaps in the air and whirls, forming a flower 
of folds. 
First look at all of them, merrily winding around 
on the greensward ; 
Then thou singly wilt choose one who shall 
gladden thee most. 
Seek what is beautiful ever, the ugly need not be 
sought for: 
So the dance will delight, for it is joyous and 
iair. 



DELPHL S3 



Dimitri. 



O Dimitri, I hail thee — thou art a poetical 
being. 
Thou wert born a hymn, placid content is thy 
life. 
Musical too are thy days as they flow in harmoni- 
ous cadence, 
All thy moments of time are little waves of 
sweet sounds. 
Here thou dost lie on this stone, smooth frag- 
ment of some ancient temple, 
From whose broken forms gush many beauti- 
ful strains; 
For they were fashioned by hands that were 
tuned to the lyre of Apollo, 
Still the marble breathes notes thrilled from 
the heart of the God. 
Hark ! this stone, O Dimitri, is singing a hymn, 
in deep concord 
With thy nature and life, as I behold thee just 
now. 
Both of you are full sweetly attuned by the clime 
to one key-note, 
Though the instruments are greatly diverse in 
their kind. 
Truly a child of Delphi thou a ^j of i ta^4nusic 
and temples, .v^' \jX ^i\lk (x T^^ 

ifMA^l^ J892 .>^ 



34 DELPHI. 

And thou art one with the rays which thou dost 
lie-in all day. 
No wild winds can ever disturb thy serenity's 
ocean, 
As thine eyes half -shut, look into nought but 
the sun. 
Not even cranky old Seismos can shake thy 
repose everlasting 
As on thy elbow propped, resting thy head on 
thy hand 
Thou dost recline on this column outstretched. 
Let me sit down beside thee, 
And be transformed by thy spell into a Del- 
phian lyre ; 
For I wish to be played upon here by invisible 
fingers. 
And in the soul of my soul feel the calm strains 
of the God. 
But I must take out my book and my pencil, 
stung by a madness 
Which the Muses have sent from yon Castalian 
brook. 
And no rest can I find till in measures I shape 
what they whisper ; 
Punishment 'tis, I fear, for an old curse in my 
blood. 
But oh Dimitri, a greater thou art than the 
maker of poems, 
Thou art a poem thyself sung through har- 
monious days. 



DELPHI. 35 



9. Parnassian Clouds. 



Dost thou behold yon tattered cloudlets of film 
that are flying 
Up the valley below as with the wings of a 
bird? 
Subtlest gauze are their bodies, resisting no beam 
of Apollo, 
But their speed is the wind's, with the light 
gossamer's play. 
Millions on millions they hasten, all of them 
silvery, lucent: 
At my feet they now swim as I go round the 
high mount. 
Not unimportant their errand of love, if thou 
couldst but divine it : 
Secret duty they have, to them entrusted by 
Gods. 
Guess it thou canst not, although thou endeavor, 
so let me tell thee : 
Hither they hasten to join armies of deep- 
drenching clouds 
Far up Parnassus ; around his high top, and his 
sides they assemble. 
Till from their watery films grow the dense 
hosts of the storm. 
Thence they descend from the summit with huge 
sieves of water 



36 DELPHI, 

Which on the Olives are poured that with 
much fruit they be hung. 
Every beautiful rill that leaps down the beautiful 
Mountain, 
Will be full in its banks, far overflowing the 
plain. 
Bearing the gift of new life to all of the vine- 
yards and orchards ; 
Then too the flowers will spring, dressing the 
hills in their robes, 
For the beautiful spirit of Nature they win from 
her body. 
And they deck her fair form till it doth mirror 
her soul. 
That is what comes of these filmy cloudlets when 
once they are gathered 
Into drops of the rain or in Parnassian 
streams. 
Look ! the Heavens are full of them — at their 
speed too I wonder ; 
They in their chase for the top strike the rough 
sides of the steep 
And thus lose of their delicate moisture. How 
rapt is their struggle 
The very uppermost height yonder to gain in 
their race ! 
Thus would I say to them: Patience, O little, 
silvery cloudlet, 
Dash not so madly thy drops where they are 
lost on the rocks 5 



DELPHI. 37 

Be thou controlled by the hand of a God along 
with thine instinct, 
He will lead thee in time where thou wilt join 
all thj kin 
On yon summit from which is sent the sweet dew 
of the Muses: 
Thence every pasture of Earth verdant will 
grow from thy drops. 



10. The Flight. 

Tired of the Muses' incessant throng I fled to the 
mountain, 
They had embraced me too hard in the still 
clasp of their arms ; 
Round their fountain I loitered, and down their 
streamlet I sauntered ; — 
Too many kisses they gave, I could not stand 
so much love. 
So to the cliffs I wandered, trying to think about 
nothing, 
And I succeeded quite well just the first time 
that I tried. 
One empty day I longed for — a day which was 
utterly empty, 
That I might lay it between other bright Del- 
phian days 
Always filled to an overflow rich with the whispers 
of Muses: 



38 DELPHI. 

For my feeling was blunt with the excess of 
delight. 
Much too long had I tried to look at Olympian 
radiance ; 
Both of my eyes were blind from the fierce 
gleams of the Gods. 
So their presence I shunned, I ran from their 
haunts, from their temples. 
Free of the Gods I would live just the short 
course of the sun. 
To the Korykian cave I retire, to the core of the 
mountain, 
There to remain in the dark far from the 
shapes of the light ; 
Into the gloomy recesses I enter with flickering 
taper ; 
Look at this arch overhead — this after all is a 
fane; 
And behold these crystalline figures built by the 
droplets — 
Hundreds of images rise dripped from above 
to the Earth. 
So they are here, the bright forms are here too, 
and dwell in their temple : 
It is Pan, I should say, with all the train of 
his nymphs. 
Truly if man will not build their abode, it is built 
by kind Nature, 
Even their statues she forms deftly from rocks 
of the mount, 



DELPHI. 39 

Setting them up in their temples. Escape from 
the Gods here in Hellas ! 
Here they were born in the past, here they at 
present appear ; 
In dark caverns they shine as well as in realms of 
the sunlight : 
If thou flee from a God, thou wilt but rush to 
his arms. 



I. The Parnassian Spinner. 

Let me calmly think over what gave me to-day 
the most pleasure, 
Wliiliog the hours away as I lie stretched on 
this rug. 
Ready on cloudlets of slumber to enter the portal 
of dreamland : 
Thither to carry along something of joy is my 
wish ; 
I shall keep it and sport with it all the lone spell 
of the night-tide, 
And new colors shall weave through the bright 
play of its hues. 
What is my choice, then, out of the throng of 
beautiful visions ? 
' Tis a maiden I saw spring on her horse from 
a rock 
(40; 



DELPHI, 41 

At the side of the road as she went from the 
villMge this mornincr, 
For her image and feat with me have gone all 
the day. 
On the air she appeared to fly with invisible 
pinions 
From the top of that stone, till in the saddle she 
lit; 
Then old Sorrel starts off on a trot as she takes 
up her spindle, 
Also the distaff she holds — draws out a flock 
of the wool, 
With her fingers she sorts it and pulls it to suit- 
able thinness, 
Then gives the spindle a whirl till the small 
fibers be spun ; 
Next she skillfully reels the white yarn on the 
spool of the spindle, 
Till the clew has been made ready for shuttle 
and loom. 
That is the maiden forme — each moment of life 
is an action, 
Brings to the world a new deed, which, be it 
small, yet is good. 
So all the while that her horse moves rapidly 
down to the Olives, 
She is spinning the thread for the fair folds in 
the dance; 
Each of the threads has the glance of her eye and 
touch of her finger 



42 DELPHI. 

Which they will carry along into the garment 
when wove. 
Thus they musical ever must be with her skill 
and her fancy, 
For they all will declare what she has hiid in 
her work ; 
When the folds of white raiment shall wave on 
the youths in the chorus, 
Glorious hymns they will sing, which were 
inwrought of her soul ; 
Every thread will join its own little strain to that 
music 
That from the garment doth rise, tuned to the 
play of the folds. 



2. Color and Song on Parnassus, 

Out by the Delphian way to Arachoba Kalligy- 
naika, 
Town of the beautiful maids, under Parnassian 
tops, 
Slowly I climbed, when far up the mount T beheld 
a red apron 
Dropping in flames to the ground over a lap 
of white folds. 
Both of the hues stood out on the air afar up the 
mountain; 
Form I could scarcely discern in the twin 
colors' embrace. 



DELPHI. 43 

On white modesty's folds there lay the redness of 
passion, 
Chaste was the view to the eye, yet ever chal- 
lenged to love. 
Wings of crimson appeared to rest on the down 
of a bosom ; 
Bird it was to the look with its bright plumage 
enskyed. 
Bird it was and loudly it sang on the perch of the 
vineyard, 
Till the sides of the mount sweetly were flooded 
with song 
Overflowing the Olives with music mellowed by 
distance : 
Vocal all Nature it made — vocal it made me in 
turn. 
Nightingale I was going to say — but in verses of 
poets 
That poor birdling has sung till it has lost all 
its voice. 
There I look at the tints and list to the lay of 
the songtress. 
Till together they melt into harmonious 
tones ; 
Some dear pain fills her throat and sets all the 
hilltops to throbbing, 
Still the warm notes have a soul white as the 
robe of the maid. 
Love now ingrains with its blush those folds of 
modesty candid — 



44 DELPHI, 

So speaks sof tlj her dress, so too speaks softly 
her song. 
See ! another has joined her, infolding the same 
red pinions 
Over the fleeces beneath; now there are two of 
the birds ; 
Yet another draws near, then another, Oh, still 
another : — 
Now a dozen or more stand on yon ridge far 
above. 
Give me, O fancy, some image in which to im- 
prison these singers. 
That I may take them along when I Parnassus 
shall leave. 
And be able to list to their strain in my journey 
forever ; 
Simply say, 'tis a flock — flock of bright birds 
on the slope. 
That together high up there have lit, the red- 
winged, white-bodied, 
Nature's boon to this clime, born of the sun and 
the heights. 
Note the color of voices attuned to the color of 
garments, 
Hinting the passion of youth tempered with 
chastity's snow. 
Hark to the choir ! their lay is of love with its 
pang and its pleasure ; 
All of the flock are alike — have but one note 
in the heart. 



DELPHI. 45 

List ! that note I have too in my heart — I am 
going to sing it — 
Merely a bird would I be — now I fly up to 
that flock. 



3. The Reason Why. 

Wherefore are all of the maids on these hills ar- 
rayed in like colors ? 
Why has each thrush in the field ever the same 
kind of plumes? 
Why can sing but one lay the nightingale hid in 
the hedges? 
Nature has given the law which all her children 
controls. 
She has appareled the shapes that move on the 
slant of this mountain; 
Delphian instinct they have, deeper by far than 
design. 
These bright robes are one with the sun and the 
sky, with the hilltops, 
Here they grow from the soil, any thing else 
can not be. 
Slowly I saunter along by the road and gaze at 
the colors ; 
Ked on white from the heights falls in mine eye 
with a spell, 
And attaches some strong invisible thread to my 
heartstrings 



46 DELPHI. 

That I am drawn to yon maid out of my way 
up the steep. 
There for the raindrops she busily loosens the 
earth of the vineyard 
Whose fine rootlets must sip ere of the wine 
we may sip ; 
Labor has modeled the turn of her limbs with 
the skill of a sculptor, 
While the Graces have drawn every line of her 
shape ; 
Gentle exertion, the subtlest of painters, has 
penciled her features, 
Dipped in Parnassian airs are all the hues of 
her face. 
As I approach, the red garment she grasps, on 
the white she adjusts it — 
Still she is but a bird pruning her plumes for 
display 
When peradventure some mate of her kind that 
way may be flying ; 
Now the same tints I observe twinned in her 
visage and form, 
For her cheeks are two roses imbedded in gar- 
lands of lilies — 
Passion's rapturous flush chastened in snowy 
restraint. 
What can nature now mean, — the sly dame — 
by displaying these colors? 
Still I ask of myself, springing with joy up 
the steep. 



DELPHI. 47 

Thou art a fool, a blind fool— was the answer I 
heard to my question, — 
Look at thj^self and thiuk what thou art doing 
just now. 
Hast not thou been allured by that bird to fly up 
this hillside 
Through the enchantment of hues — what 
better reason than this ? 
When she drew thither thine eyes — still more, 
when she drew thy footsteps — 
That was the aim of this dress, its divine end 
was fulfilled ; 
For to a bird it transformed thee, so that thou 
flew'st up the mountain 
Where was the apron of red laid on the kirtle 
of white. 



4, The Black Lover. 

Yonder the crow swims down through the river 

of air in the valley, 
River that fills the high banks built out of 

mountains of stone; 
Sportively now he flaps his black wings in the 

glare of the sunshine, 
Then he whirls over for fun right on his back 

in the air, 
And appears to be falling. But with a caw he 

soon catches 



48 DELPHI. 

Wind in his plumage of jet, then with the 
sunbeams he skims 
Gaily along in his flight ; more boldly he oars 
too his pinions, 
Even he glides up the rays toward the fierce 
eye of the day. 
That rough note is but laughter ; — again he 
whirls over, laughing 
That all the world he can fool by a mere feint 
of a fall. 
Some black gallant he is, from amorous con- 
quest returning 
Mongst the dusky young fowl that have their 
home in these hills. 
So the crow in his gayety sports down the Del- 
phian valley 
In a wild play with his wings till to the Olives 
he sinks : 
There the maids are at work, and they also of 
love are singing ; 
Even the crow of the air seems to drop down 
to their song. 
So too I dally in sunshine with Eros whose wings 
I have borrowed. 
Every day I now sport, over the Olives up- 
borne. 
And at times I seem to be falling — in love to be 
falling. 
But I catch myself soon, high in the air, with 
a laugh. 



DELPHI. 49 



5. Modem Temple of Bacchus. 

Here is, said Yankos, the merry resort of the 
town — let us enter, 
Magazee is its name as thou wilt hear from 
each tongue ; 
Floor it has none; hence be not surprised that 
thy step is so noiseless, 
For the ground has been wrought to a thick 
carpet of dust 
By the tread of the feet of these villagers now 
for some ages ; 
Bow as you enter, — your head else will be 
rapped from above. 
Not a chair can be seen, sit down on this bench 

at the table ; 
Table and bench are adorned, carved in the 

jacknife's strong lines. 
Somewhat dark is the room, from a single low 
door it is lighted : 
Still on a counter displayed see the huge bot- 
tles of joy. 
Upwards glance — no ceiling obstructs the view 
of the rafters. 
Quinces, pomegranates there hang in the dry 
orchard of beams. 
But let us try these immaculate drops now — 
drops of pure virtue, 
4 



50 DELPHI. 

That from the Delphian rocks by the good 
vine are distilled. 
In their fragrance they subtly are breathing the 
breath of the wine-god. 
Who will not leave his old realm though he in 
poverty come. 
This, O friend, is the temple of Bacchus — 
temple not ancient, 
Where still his worshipers meet, they are 
assembled here now ; 
Poor God, how I do pity thee, banished to dirt 
and to darkness, 
Who dost illumine the soul with all thy flashes 
divine ! 
Once thou didst dwell in the light mid pillars of 
white alabaster, 
Many a statue of old with thy young form 
was imbreathed, 
Wound with tendrils and leaves of the grapes 
and crowned with its clusters ; — 
Sculptured oft were thy deeds high on the 
temple and tomb. 
^3till O Bacchus thou livest, on mortals still 
breathest divinely, 
I can see thy old flash here in this rude 
Magazee. 
Now I invoke thy divinity for a sly touch of thy 
frenzy, — 
Glorious madman of Gods, rattle thy thyrse 
in mine eyes. 



DELPHI. 51 



6. The Wine God and the Love God. 

Often sly little Eros I find in the train of wild 
Bacchus, 
Covered with tendrils and leaves, hid in the 
clusters of grapes ; 
Then the young rogue peeps out of the foliage 
which he has stolen. 
From his small puffy cheeks flashing light 
dimples of laughs. 
Oft with fair Semele's son he is seen unfolding 
new pinions. 
Oft flies after that God, rapidly chasing each 
draught 
As it sparkles down into the soul through the 
ducts of the body ; 
Love with the thrill of the wine enters high 
fantasy's hall. 
How the weird juice doth glide into every dark 
nook of our being, 
Which it then makes all light with its swift 
flashes divine, 
And with its rapture it touches the body's invis- 
ible genius, 
Giving a wing to each sense till it mounts up 
to the sun ! 
Soon the Muses, although they be shy, appear 
to the wine-god, 



52 DELPHI. 

Showing their secretest wealth to the devout 
of his train. 
All the Nine will pass before eyes that are rapt in 
his worship, 
Seen in their beautiful form only through drops 
of the wine ; 
To the adorer true-hearted they come with tender 
embraces, 
Whisper a hymn of their own which he remem- 
bers and writes. 
Eaise the bowl to my lips, advance it full to my 
tongue-tip. 
That its sly power may glide into the soul at a 
touch ; 
For I wish to behold the resplendent forms of the 
Muses, 
Their soft cadence to catch lisping Olympian 
song. 
But look here — on the rim of this beaker is 
balancing Eros, 
Flapping his pinions in play, ready to fly with 
a draught. 



7. Conflict of Gods at Delphi. 

The wild throng of the Gods this time has un- 
settled me somewhat. 
And a confusion divine sports on the throne of 
my brain ; 



DELPHL 53 

For too many Olympian guests have knocked at 
my palace, 
Too much divinity here me the poor mortal 
assailed. 
First came Bacchus, the leaf-covered, grape- 
haired beautiful stripling; 
To me he gave a small craze just at the tip of 
the tongue. 
Eros followed hard after, and soothed me with 
soft little wing-strokes. 
Him I fondled and hugged but by his arrow 
was stung ; 
Still from that puncture I suffer a strange inde- 
finable tickle; 
Henceforth I must take care how I caress the 
mad boy. 
Bacchus and Eros, I find now, share the domains 
of Apollo 
Here in his Delphian seat, they too are perched 
on these rocks. 
Wine doth offer its beaker of humorous rapture 
to wisdom, 
Love hurls a torch in the soul, kindling each 
faculty high. 
Nor is absent the Muse from the hallowed home 
of the Sungod, 
All of the Sisters lurk still in Castalia's 
stream ; 



54 DELPHI. 

These too gave a low rap at my door and de- 
manded admittance, 
While the wings of the Boy fanned balmy air 
in my face. 
Thus many Gods are driving me — all of them 
often together, 
Often singly they come, pulling me hither and 
yon, 
Whence among them great strife. But Eros is 
always the victor. 
For the Nine him assist turning his flutter to 
hymns, 
And a delicious melody flows from the flap of his 
pinions 
Which even Jove subdues to the sweet lull of 
its spell. 
Yet I know not if Eros it be who has help from 
the Muses, 
Or if the Muses it be who are by Eros in- 
spired. 
Ask me not to decide, I pray, the difficult ques- 
tion. 
If I sing for my love or if I love for my 
song. 
Both are divine, I assure thee, and both have my 
fervidest worship. 
And a temple to both I shall erect with the 
hymn I 



DELPHI. 55 

Love is divine, but divine are also the pearl-drop- 
ping Muses, 
Either may grapple my hand — then I am led 
by a God. 
Nor forget in the Delphian background stands 
ever Apollo, 
Who well knows what he does, whether he love 
or he sing. 



I. The Saints and the Muses. 

Holy Castalia is not deserted, it still has a wor- 
ship. 
Though divinities new here are enthroned out 
of place ; 
For the dark-stoled Saint now presides in the 
bright-dropping fountain, 
The fair fane of the Muse yields to the shrine 
of Saint John. 
Still there is joy in the thought that continuous 
is the devotion , 
That the beauty antique gleams through the 
ages of night. 
But the black robe of the Saint has banished white 
folds of the Goddess ; 
Long are his hair and his beard, gloomy his 
thoughts are and grim ; 
(56) 



DELPHI, 67 

Skull and bones lie around him, while be on eter- 
nity maunders, 
Starved into tatters of flesh, wrinkled in form 
to a rag. 
This is the body that made revelations of beasts 
and of monsters 
Whose grisly offspring have slimed many Par- 
nassian rills. 
Banish, O Psyche, forever the brood of dragons 
and devils, 
All the dark brood of Hell bom in the brain 
of the Saints, 
Who have changed the beautiful world to a jungle 
of goblins. 
Till the horrible craze seems to have made us 
all mad. 
What a pity that now they possession should 
have of Castalia, 
And such monsters should breed right in the 
Muses' glad stream ! 
So have the clear-voiced Sisters been frightened 
away from their waters, 
Always to sing they refuse when they with hor- 
ror are filled. 
Oh the Saints atrnbiliary, dismal their thought 
and their raiment. 
Dark they are to the eye, equally dark to the 
soul. 
And I confess, the angels are not to my liking, 
though radiant, 



58 DELPHI. 

They are some neutral thing, though all their 
wings be of gold, 
For they seem but of one sex, or what is the 
same thing, of no sex; 
If they be woman or man, surely it does them 
no good. 
But the nymphs I adore, as they show their forms 
in the fountain, 
Often I look at them bathe, sporting their 
limbs in its plash, 
Nor do they hide the white body away in the 
dungeon of garments. 
As if guilty they were, having divinity's 
form. 



2. The Castalian Washers. 

What is that sound re-echoing out of the gorge 
of Bagenyi 
Where the Castalian fount shows the first 
crystalline throb? 
Oft the dull thud is repeated and smites the 
rough side of the mountain ; 
'Tis the blow of a maul in the firm hand of 

a dame 
Who is washing and pounding the folds into 

whiteness and order; 
Even the folds must be beat ere to new music 
they move. 



DELPHI. 59 

Then they will glide full winsomely into the 
rhythm of sculpture, 
And they will glow in the dance on the fair 
youth as he treads. 
Just behold those vigorous blows from the arm 
of the washer : 
Seeing a thing made clean gives a delight to 
the Gods. 
Many Nausicaas now are preparing their own and 
their brothers* 
Irreproachable robes for the gay dance at the 
feast. 
But, Oh think — this is Poesy's fount, the rill 
of Cast alia, 
Which is now used by the town cleansing its 
filth in the stream. 
What do the Muses say to it as they arise from 
the water? 
Are they, 1 wonder, in wrath, or do they 
sanction this use ? 
But a voice, playing over the surface, thus spake 
from the brooklet: 
"It is right, it is right, and I approve every 
blow. 
Many a stain besmirches the raiment of sunny 
Parnassus ; 
Great is the need just now that it be thoroughly 
bucked. 
Pound the garments, O washers, with all the 
fierce might of your muscle, 



60 DELPHI. 

For they again must be clean ere we the Muses 
arise. 
Dash them and drench them and rinse them in 
the clear depths of Castalia, 
That they not only white but also musical 
be. 
Long and carelessly have they been worn, until 
the white drapery 
Seems the dress of despair, rumpled to 
numberless rucks." 
Gladly I look at the furious washers wielding the 
beetle 
Pitiless on the grim filth with irrepressible 
brawn ; 
These are now the true nymphs of the stream, 
full of anger and vengeance 
That the bright robes have been soiled with all 
the dirt of the earth. 
Many a feature they have that tells of their 
pedigree ancient, 
Still their limbs are undraped as in the ages of 
old; 
Full the bare arms are of swift-sweeping, merci- 
less tendon and muscle. 
And there peers the nude thigh from the short 
kirtle below, 
While the stout bosom is dancing a dance in the 
watery mirror. 
Softly imparting its swell to the white folds in 
the stream. 



DELPHI. 61 

Sad necessity — nymphs of Castalia transformed 
into washers, 
Turned to Furies to-day, forced to belabor 
mere filth ! 
But for the festival wait, when the youths shall 
move in the chorus. 
Then the glory of brawn from every ruffle will 
gleam. 
And the folds of the garments antique will leap 
in their splendor. 
For once more they are new, fresh from the 
Muses' clear rill. 



3. Castalia's Horror. 

On the edge of the chasm behold yon child in the 

distance 
Gathering flowers alone, lost in the joy of the 

hours. 
With its own sweet thoughts it pleasantly seems 

to be sporting. 
As it doth skip round the rocks, busy from 

blossom to bloom. 
While I look at its play I feel indefinable 

longing. 

For a young voice I can hear echoing over the 
seas. 
Nearer it comes to the perilous edge of the cliff — 
and yet nearer ; 



62 DELPHI, 

I am afraid lest it fall — what a fierce pang in 
my breast ! 
Still along on the brink of the chasm in peace it 
is playing; 
I would shout, but a bridge built of one voice 
can not reach. 
Now it sees a new flower inclining just over the 
margin 
With a cup of fresh red ; thither it springs and 
it bends 
Over that precipice deep of hundreds of horrible 
fathoms, 
Reaching out its small hand for the bright gem 
of the cliff. 
Agony gives a rude wrench to the heart — it seizes 
the fancy: 
See ! down, down the child falls into the depths 
with a plunge ! 
Brains are dashed on the rocks that bloodily now 
are bespattered, 
Crushed are its flesh and bones to an indiffer- 
ent pulp ; 
Eed with the stain has become the pure flow of 
the rill of Casta lia. 
Its white pebbles are fouled with the thick 
blotches of blood. — 
Hold, O Fancy, for thou hast defiled the stream 
of the Muses, 
These are thine own ghastly shows, hideous 
specters of death, 



DELPHI. 63 

For the child is safe — now it runs in delight up 
the hill-side 
Quite away from the brink; also the flower it 
has, 
Which along with a nosegay it joyously brings to 
its father, 
Who in an Olive's fresh shade rests from the 
heat of the day. 
O grisly Fancy, Castalia cannot endure thy 
horrors, 
From grim phantoms she flees back to her cave 
in the rocks. 
One drop of scarlet thrown into her stream will 
stain her clear waters; 
Stay thy sanguineous hand, smear not the 
Muses with gore, 
For the white folds of their robes will speedily 
show the dark blood-spot, 
So that the Furies they seem, not the mild 
Goddesses, bright 
With these rays wherein they now dwell mid 
choruses happy. 
Here in the Delphian world ruled from Par- 
nassian tops. 
Every song of the Sisters is deftly inwoven of 
sunshine. 
Every note is a joy hymned in accord with 
the beams. < 



64 DELPHI. 

Then let me banish forever all blood, all terror 
and darkness : 
Only with Phoebus henceforth I am determined 
to dwell. 



4. The Old and the New Gods of Delphi. 

At the waters of joyous Castalia I met an old 
woman, 
Often she crossed herself as she was passing 
the brook ; 
From her lips of lean wrinkles darkly she mut- 
tered a prayer 
To the Saint in the fount where the bright 
Muses once dwelt. 
I must acknowledge, the presence here of that 
weazen old woman, 
With the thought of the Samt, drove all the 
Sisters away. 
And in their place was gushing the waters of bit- 
ter resentment, 
Till my Delphian mood nearly was drowned in 
the surge. 
When she had ended her prayer, quickly she 
turned and addressed me : 
Why, O stranger, I ask, do you not make 
sacred signs 
Of the Cross on your breast as you pass St. 
John's holy chapel? 



DELPHI. 65 

Infidel art thou — a Turk — thus to neojlect 
Christian rites ? — 
Yes, I fear it is true, thy belief is not mine — I 
answered : 
In my heart I abhor here such a gesture to 
make, 
Or now even to think of the Cross with its hor- 
rible torture : 
Any thought of the kind hurls into chaos my 
days. 
Here at Delphi there is no death — only life in 
its beauty — 
Save the death through that Cross, death of 
the Muses and Gods. 
I am one with the Earth now, one with the good- 
ness of Nature, 
Simply I live through the hours filled with the 
joy of her strain ; 
After this life I think not of realms of tumultuous 
anguish ; 
Nor do I wish for myself any one ever to 
die ; 
Time was once when I hoped for decease or 
desired some ransom 
From Fate's clutch, and perchance thus to 
relieve me of pain ; 
But I live now in this Delphian sunshine, I sigh 
for no Heaven, 
Merely I wish to remain blent in the harmony 
sweet 

5 



66 DELPHI. 

That doth swell from the two great worlds with- 
out and within me : 
Double that chorus of worlds, but their deep 
music is one. 
Very different once, it is true, were my thoughts 
and my feelings, 
And again they may change in the still beat of 
the years. — 
I do not think the old woman could know quite 
what I was saying, 
Still I continued to speak, talking perchance to 
myself : 
Do not suppose that harmonious living is not a 
religion, 
Though it be not thine own, though too its 
source be remote. 
Like some melody sweeter by distance, the old 
Gods of Hellas 
Softly arise and attune to a new concord my 
life. 
And at this moment they are commanding most 
deeply my worship ; 
The Castalian nymphs, too, I adore from my 
soul. 
But above all others I daily commune with 
Apollo, 
Who still loves his old haunts, though he 
unkinged must come. 
Look up yonder at Delphi — think what Apollo 
once made it — 



DELPHI. 67 

For he made it the soul in the fair body of 
Greece, 
And he decked it with all of the splendor of 
shrines and of temples: 
Look at it now, the poor clump — 'tis the 
abode of the Saints. 
Nay, good woman, to these do not ask me to offer 
devotion; 
Here I must see the old Gods as they once 
reigned from these heights. 



5. Night at Delphi. 

In the moonlight yonder uprises to heaven 
Phloumbouki, 
All alive it appears under the beams of the 
night ; 
Monsters of darkness are crawling far up to the 
perch of its summit. 
While its cavernous sides house many hideous 
shapes. 
Not for the world would I enter this hour the gorge 
of Bagenyi, 
Out of fear of the ghosts which there abide in 
the dark. 
Now is the reign of Dian, the sister of bright- 
faced Apollo, 
But the clear God has fled from the dim earth 
and its nooks ; 



68 DELPHI. 

Men are asleep until his return, avoiding the 
Goddess, 
Not a fold can be seen in the faint glimmer of 
rays ; 
Hushed are also the hymns of the maidens, the 
children of sunshine, 
All the birds are at rest, save the dull brooders 
of night. 
But the fantastic huge monsters of chaos break 
loose from the mountain, 
Out of the caverns they come whither they fled 
from the God : 
For the sister, though gracious, is weak and can 
not control them, 
Can not the dragons control freed from the 
light of the sun. 
At her spell the whole brood doth seem to leap 
forth to existence. 
Under her smile they are born, born in her 
mystical beams. 
O high Apollo, well wert thou named the slayer 
of Python ; 
The huge serpent was pierced by the keen 
arrow shot forth 
From thy bow all light; of old it was slain here 
at Delphi, 
And this rock was transformed into the eye of 
the world. 
Once again, O day-god, place on the bow-string 
that arrow. 



DELPHI. 69 

Slaughter the numberless brood which has been 
reared in the night, 
And the infinite throng of phantasmas, the mon- 
ster-begotten, 
Pierce — and restore thy bright reign as it was 
once on these heights. 



6. The Building of the Temple. 

Who first built on this hill-side the temple to 
far-darting Phoebus? 
An old story it is, ancient is too the dis- 
pute. 
Three are the legends whic h are now gracefully 
asking our credence : 
Out of the authors of old let them with pru- 
dence be scanned. 
This is the first report, that the structure was 
built of the laurel, 
Tree of Apollo's love — whom he once wooed 
as a maid, 
Beautiful Daphne, changed to a tree and then 
wrought to a temple: 
This account I believe, for it is worthy of 
faith . 
I myself have built a small fane out of leaflets 
and branches. 
In it I sing to the God many a laurel-crowned 
hymn, 



70 DELPHI. 

That the harmony sweet of the Muses may float 
in his presence : 
There he gives me to dwell viewing his glorious 
face. 
Then the second report of it comes, and this I 
must tell thee : 
It was built by the bees, architects first of the 
world, 
And its walls they made of their cells, and the 
mortar was honey, 
Sweetest of artists they build all of their in- 
stinct to form. 
Then they filled the fair home of Apollo with 
stores from the flowers, 
So that the dew of these bees sweetened the 
bread of mankind. 
Also this story I cannot deny, for 1 ate of the 
honey, 
And the same structure beheld where dear 
Apollo resides. 
Yet the third account too I believe — it was builded 
by Vulcan — 
On the Olympian heights fair it arose in his 
shop. 
Many a line can still be seen that was drawn by 
his compass. 
All the stones have been hewn by a divinity's 
skill. 
To a deep subtle music taking their place in the 
temple. 



DELPHI. 71 

Chanting when they are there soft unaccount- 
able hymns. 
Eound this fane is forever reposing a chorus of 
sculpture, 
Forms of the Gods above, copied from thence 
into stone; 
And this temple entire was borne down to men 
from Olympus, 
In a transport divine guided by Hermes the 
swift; 
For it is modeled, they say, from palaces mighty 
of marble. 
Which there repose on the heights in a perpet- 
ual day. 
Reared by Vulcan himself when he built the 
Olympian city 
For the bright Gods to indwell — whence they 
come down to our earth. 
All the reports I believe — all three are worthy 
of credence — 
And they are true I maintain, if thou but know 
what is true. 



7. Delphi the Seeress. 

In the old ages was Delphi prophetic, doubly 
prophetic ; 
Destiny distant it showed both for itself and 
the world. 



72 DELPHI. 

What it to others in vision foretold was what 
itself suffered, 
Always the arrow turned back into itself that 
it shot. 
What it saw in the sport of the hours, was but 
its own image, 
For in its soul was the type of the great One 
and the AIL 
So, in revealing itself, the universe too it re- 
vealed — 
What else could it declare but what it had in 
itself? 
Such is the prophet, alas ! and such is the painful 
prediction. 
At his own heart he directs what he presages 
to man, 
For he too is a man. When beautiful Hellas in 
passion 
Turned against its dear self arras that were 
meant for its foe. 
Then too Delphi was turned, of its own fore- 
knowledge the victim. 
For it also was Greek, it was involved in the 
doom. 
That irreversible word which was uttered by 
priestess enraptured, 
Held the dim fate of herself, also the fate of 
the fane ; 
She was rent in her soul by the might of the same 
strong convulsion 



DELPHI. 73 

Which she saw in the Jand, since it lay too in 
herself. 
Brother was turned against brother and Delphi 
was turned against Delphi — 
Then fair Hellas was lost — Delphi the seeress 
was lost. 
Look at the ruins which peep here — they lay in 
the foresight of Delphi, 
Still she could not escape what she so clearly 
foresaw ; 
Nor yet could she by silence avoid her dolorous 
duty: 
When to be prophet she ceased, then she had 
ceased to exist. 
Strange is, O prophet, thy lot, — what thou seest 
and sayest to others 
Is but thyself and thy fate which thou behold'st 
in the Hours. 



8. The Foreign Shepherd at Delphi. 

It is night — from below to the highest Delphian 
summits 
Darkness covers the earth, Silence has opened 
her reign. 
No one would say that here was once the bright 
home of Apollo, 
So completely extinct are all the beams of his 
face. 



74 DELPHI. 

Yet behold a single dim light far off in the 
valley, 
Where the Olives are — what can it mean, do 
you think? 
' Tis the camp-fire lit by a shepherd — Wallachian 
shepherd. 
Who sojourns for a while that he may pasture 
his flock 
On the thyme that sprouts in the spring from the 
sides of Parnassus: 
Stranger he comes from afar, seeking the suc- 
culent herbs. 
That small light with its rays bores a hole through 
the darkness to Delphi 
Till it reaches the eye ; by it white fragments 
I see 
Faintly trying to send some gleam of their 
ancient perfection 
As they peer out at my feet, with their bright 
smile broke in twain. 
Here the shepherd remains for the festival fair of 
the spring-tide, 
And on the slant of the hills mingles his herd 
with the flowers. 
But when summer has come, he flees to his home 
in the mountains 
Toward the distant North, shunning the rage 
of the Dog. 
There he recounts to his rustic neighbors who 
gather around him, 



DELPHI. 75 

What he has seen far away — wonders of 
climate and sky, 
Wonders of ruins festooned with many a song 
and story, 
Dowered with magical spell by the weird hand 
of a God. 
Notice his light, how it shimmers across the waves 
of the darkness ! 
Now it doth seem to go out; now it doth flicker 
anew 
Dimly, as if a lone beacon tossing about on the 
ocean ; 
Now a blaze it sends up flashing the tips of the 
cliffs. 
Yet all alone it shines in the valley — no other 
shepherd 
Hither has come from abroad for the Parnas- 
sian food. 
But I can see in that flamelet, though distant, 
the Olives rejoicing, 
Its small glow they feel like the approach of 
the dawn ; 
Also Castalia leaps in its light with a fresh laugh 
of gladness. 
As her diamonds are lit by a soft ray in the 
night. 
Still it is only a wandering flash by a stranger 
enkindled, 
Throwhig its sheen for a time over the village 
and hills ; 



76 DELPHI. 

He will sojourn in the valley merely along with 
the flowers, 
Then for his home he departs ; with many 
yeanlings increased 
Is his herd, and is fed to sleek fatness on thyme 
of Parnassus ; 
Fragrance also is borne from the sweet flowers 
and herbs. 
So the rude barbarous shepherd — the distant 
Wallachian shepherd, 
Builds a small camp-fire too, where was the 
Muses' abode. 



Book Second. 



In the Olives 



(77) 



ARGUMENT. 

The Olives at Delphi form one of the chief features 
in the landscape^ and they are also intimately connected 
with the social and economical life of the people. They 
extend down the hill-side for miles to the rivulet Pleistos^ 
and in the Olive season the whole village is occupied 
with picking the crop. The sojourner from abroad will 
wander through the orchard in all directions, and talk 
with the people; he will not fail of many a little adventure. 
He will notice antique customs, old habits of speech and 
thought; ancient relics of various kinds arid even monu- 
ments he will stumble upon in his rambles. But chiejly 
he will obtain pure draughts of the old idyllic life which 
from time immemorial has existed on these hills. Yet 
certain modern matters will intrude themselves even 
into the Olives at Delphi, and produce some discords 
with the Delphic life and mood. Still he will dream of 
transplanting the Olive to his home. — It is to be noticed 
that the word ' ' Olives ' ' has, in this poem as well as in 
Greek, three meanings: a place, a tree, a fruit; to these 
three, one may add a fourth meaning. 



(78) 



I. The Olive. 

In fair Hellas there grow many joyous young 
sprouts, but the Olive 
Was the first love of my heart, and will remain 
to the last. 
See how it shoots up there on the hill -side and in 
the valley ! 
Youth is the name of that tree, beauty its 
form and its life. 
Softly it waves in the wind that comes like a 
breath from Parnassus — 
Wind sweetly tuned in the twigs, sent from the 
heights by a Muse, 
Who outpours her melodious tones in the rustle 
of branches, 

(79) 



80 IN THE OLIVES. 

And imbreathes all her grace on the young 
leaves in the dance. 
So each tree, each leaflet doth move in the mer- 
riest humor, 

Yet they all move at once, forming a chorus of 

joy 

Over the fields, far down through the vale, to the 
limit of vision, 
Turning their silver-green robes to the mild 
sway of the breeze. 
Everywhere on the branches there hang multitu- 
dinous berries, 
All in a laugh and a dance with the gay leaves 
and the limbs. 
Some are ripe with dark-brown visage, and ready 
to gather, 
Often they fall of themselves into the lap of 
the earth ; 
Others are young, quite young, and still cling to 
the arms of the mother. 
Though their cheeks have a flush, turning to 
blushes of love. 
Why do the Olives rejoice? In their shade are 
Parnassian maidens. 
Wafted by thoughts of the dance like the light 
leaves of the tree 
In the wind. The fruit from the ground and the 
branches they gather — 



IN THE OLIVES. 81 

Fairest fruit themselves, tinted by airs from 

the hills — 
All with fluttering hearts, as they think of the 

chorus to-morrow. 
For then a festival is, with the bright dance at 

the trees. 



2. The Songsters in the Olives 

What a choir of birds I hear as I pass through 
the Olives I 
Spring has just come down the vale, now it is 
tuning all throats. 
Each glad songster doth seem in this grove his 
voice to be testing 
On the sunny bland air made for the note of 
th« heart. 
Thousandfold are the tones that through one 
another are darting, 
Winding around in soft turns; tender with love 
they embrace. 
Yet the whole orchestra deeply to one limpid note 
is attuned, 
Though some discords may rise o'er the clear 
lake of the sound. 
What is the strain that they carol ? List, till we 
catch its fine pulses — 
'Tis the gladness of youth throbbing in hymns 
at the spring. 

6 



82 IN THE OLIVES. 

Thousands are also the songsters amid the now 
leaves of the branches, 
Each one piping his best, each with some trill 
of his own. 
Some have a loud full voice heard afar, but it has 
little beauty. 
Some have a small low note, but it of sweetness 
is full ; 
Some utter sounds that ferociously hiss with the 
hiss of a serpent, 
Even the sound will bite though but of air be 
its fangs ; 
Some are old, going back in their strain to the 
ages heroic: 
Oft deep voices I hear, chanting, 1 fancy, of 
Troy. 
Some are young, just fledged, and cannot yet fly 
from the branches. 
Or if they did seek to fly, down they would 
flutter to earth. 
Still they all sang — the Greek songsters — sang 
in melodious measures, 
Though there were many engulfed in the 
grand swell of the whole. 
Each seemed trying to drown all the others in 
oceans of music: 
But I could hear one voice sweeter than all of 
the rest 
And much stronger ; in some of its notes it rang 
like a bugle, 



m THE OLIVES. 83 

Then it would melt in its strain till the soul 
gushed at the eye. 
So they continued to sing — that tuneful Parnas- 
sian army 5 
Mid the poetical leaves adding their sparkle to 
song. 
What are the songsters trying to do? As I 
think, I shall tell thee — 
They are trying to win places of perch in this 
grove. 
That they forever may dwell in the glittering 
palace of Olives, 
And be heard of all men, haply, who stroll 
through the trees. 
Often concealed from the eye they are chanting 
melodious roundels ; 
On the dark berries they feast, nourishment 
rich for the song. 
All are my joy, both the broad-winged poets and 
pin-feathered nurslings, 
For each one of them sips music and mirth 
from the clime. 
I too am going to stretch out my wings in the 
branches and flutter. 
Also my throat I shall tune though it should 
fright all the grove. 



84 IN THE OLIVES. 



3. The Olive Pickers. 



Hear the glad voices that pass down the Delphian 
way in the morning ! 
Who are these people? I ask, — why do they 
sing on the road? 
Pickers of Olives they are, now hastening into 
the orchards 
Where yon silvery creek spans with its girdle 
the dale. 
All day long they must stoop, still joyously chant 
they a ditty; 
As they pick, one by one, berries that lie on 
the ground. 
Toilsome yet merry the task is, since labor is sea- 
soned with gladness. 
So they love their fatigue, for 'tis the food of 
their mirth. 
Thus they sing as they toil, and they mid the 
Olives are happy, 
Ere the Parnassian tops yet have been climbed 
by the sun ; 
Maidens are most of them singing along with the 
birds before sunrise, 
While long shades of the hills stretch (rotn the 
East down the vale. 
Where the road is crossed by the runnel my 
stand I have taken ; 



IN THE OLIVES. 85 

There the paths from the town all come to- 
gether in one ; 
There I look at the merry young throng and 
receive friendly greeting 
From cerulean eyes set in a frame of gold 
hair. 
The fresh hummers continue to pour from the 
hives of the village 
For an hour or two; each in mine eye drops a 
smile, 
That is shed from the lips as invisible dew of the 
Graces ; 
'Tis their alms to my heart, which a poor pil- 
grim has come. 
Still the one has not passed yet, the right one ; 
impatient I loiter 
Till she arrives from the heights, winged as a 
sweet morning dream. 
To her glance I am bound, and by it am borne 
to the Olives, 
There now with it I sport, happy the rest of 
the day. 



4. The Song in the Olives. 

List to yon maid who is singing far up on the 
side of the mountain, 
Where the vineyards hang, slanting adown 
with the steep ; 



86 Iisr THE OLIVES. 

All alone she works, and a hymn she attunes to 
her labor, 
While she is trimming the vines for the bright 
nectar of Fall ; 
Scarce her shape can I see, but her voice rings 
over the valley, 
Wafting its notes through the air, till they 
rebound from the hills 
That lie opposite ; then, most lightly they fall to 
the Olives 
Where underneath the young trees hundreds of 
maidenly hands 
Are now busy — busy in picking the harvest of 
berries ; 
Though they are hid by the leaves, still I well 
know they are there. 
Hark! it is the response; not unheard have the 
notes of the maiden 
Fallen into that grove ; list to the echo from 
thence. 
For from the trees another refrain swells up to 
the mountain ; 
Many sweet voices there are, melted by dis- 
tance to one. 
Resonant, clear and full is the strain from the 
Olives ascending, 
And it responds to the first with a deep fervor 
of song. 
What are they singing of? Love — the oneness 
of man and of woman ; 



/iV THE OLIVER. 87 

Mouths by nature are twain, but the fond kiss 
makes them one ; 
Two pairs of eyes with one glance, and two pairs 
of lips with one promise — 
And in the breasts of the two one happy heart 
with its throb. 
Let the bodies be double, within them is only 
one feeling; 
Voices may also be twain, but the sweet song 
makes them one. 
Love has transmuted into one harmony both of 
these echoes, 
Swift-winged Eros now sweeps over the mount- 
ain and vale. 
Thus the vineyard answers the Olives, the Olives 
the vineyard ; 
Though far asunder in space, both have one 
passionate strain. 



5. Elpinike. 

In the new rays of the morning I walk to the 
Delphian Olives 
That are strown on the hill warm with the love 
of the sun ; 
Far down the valley they reach to the crystal- 
line ripple of Pleistus, 
Whose slender form they embrace in a soft 
forest of limbs. 



88 IN THE OLIVES. 

Mild is the breath of the wind that sets all the 
branches in motion, 
While the green wavelets of leaves roll down 
the sides of the mount. 
Thither I turn my wandering steps in search of a 
maiden. 
Whom this morn I beheld there as I entered 
the trees; 
Whom before I had seen in my dreams as a 
vision of beauty, 
Now the dim shadow is filled with the fresh 
fullness of life. 
*Twas a form that always would draw the eye of 
a stranger, 
Who to Parnassus had come seeking the face 
of a maid 
That had haunted his fancy from youth in all his 
high moments, 
To him had spoken perchance in his most rap- 
turous mood. 
Passing the fount of the Muses she sped from 
the heights of the village, 
Seemed on the air to uprise, when her swift 
features I spied ; 
As on a picture above me I gazed at the beauti- 
ful image ; 
All of me changed to a hope which she most 
sweetly returned. 
In the glint of her eyes I beheld waving torches 
of Eros, 



m THE OLIVES. ■ 89 

Who before Helen's look flew and enkindled 
the air, 
One more glance she threw back at me just as 
she entered the Olives, 
Then disappeared in the leaves as a bright 
dream in the clouds; 
Now I must follow her footsteps till perchance I 
may find her, 
For some priestess she was once when Apollo 
here ruled. 



6. The Fountain in the Olives. 

As I stray round the hills through the Olives, 
soon I grow thirsty, 
And this thirst is so sharp that it cuts down to 
the soul. 
So I seek for a spring which will cool the throbs 
of my fever: 
Here is a basin of stone filled with a crystal- 
line draught. 
Deftly the rock has been hewn to receive the rill 
of the mountain. 
Which transparently rests in the embrace of 
the moss ; 
And a small groove has been scratched in the 
stone for the fall of the water, 
Thence down the side of the rock trickles the 
thirst-quenching stream. 



90 IN THE OLIVES. 

Two little lips it doth fashion through which the 
runnel is gliding, 
Just where the drops with a laugh over the brim 
give a leap, 
And the stranger they gently invite to their pearls 
with a babble. 
Promising kisses of joy to every one of his 
sips. 
Fondly the brooklet has wound its way down 
from Parnassian summits, 
Bringing along in its breast all the fresh breath 
of the Spring — 
Whispering many a hymn from above on the 
brink in its passage : 
'Tis impregnated still with the low note of the 
Muse. 
Softly I lean to the sedge and lay my mouth to 
the crystal, 
Touch the sweet lips of the stream while of 
another I think. 
But this stone — look how it is worn — worn off 
with the kisses 
Which the wayfarers gave, ages on ages be- 
fore. 
Still the musical burn unceasing flows down from 
the mountain. 
Still the lips in the rock are just as fresh as of 
yore. 
Now each day for my walk I go by the rill in the 
Olives, 



IN THE OLIVES. 91 

Held as I saunter along in the soft arms of a 
Muse: 
Then when I drink, I fervently press those lips of 
the brooklet, 
While I list to the hymn sung in its dance down 
the hill. 
Draught of Parnassus — what could I do but join 
in the music? 
So I in unison chant, tuning my voice to the 
stream. 



7. Eros in the Olives. 

Many an hour I wander amid the vast orchard of 
Olives, 
Gaze at the sparkle of leaves silvering over the 
hills; 
Even the branches I love as they rollick and 
laugh in the sunbeams, 
And their gay humor instill into each throb of 
the heart. 
Under the trees I stop wherever a maiden is 
working. 
Furtive glafices I cast into the path of her 
eye, 
That she may see them and with them perchance 
she may covertly dally: 
Then I pass on in my search, for 'tis another I 
seek. 



92 m THE OLIVES. 

Long I hunt, deceived in my way by fantastic 
vain glimmers, 
Often I stray from tlie road, often I think of 
return. 
But at last I discover the form that imbreathes 
all my fancies ; 
Deep in the grove she is hid where but few 
strangers approach. 
Great is my joy; she knows too my face from the 
morn when she saw me 
At the Castalian rill, bent o'er the stream.for 
a drink. 
At the exchange of a look I begin to gather the 
olives 
Scattered under the trees — such was her 
laughing command ; 
I, the servant of Eros, now find it the sweetest of 
labor 
When I stoop to the ground, thence to collect 
the rich fruit ; 
And my delight is to heap in the basket of Greek 
Elpinike, 
All the olives I pickj passing the day in 
fond toil. 
One subtle ray from her eye overflows me with 
beautiful visions; 
All the reward that I ask is but to look in her 
face. 



m THE OLIVES. 93 



8. The Three Paths. 

Many the paths that lead from the village 
down to the Olives, 
All directions they branch, winding amid the 
dense trees. 
This is the first one — it goes direct to the ancient 
Metochi, 
Where the monks have their home in a low 
cloister of gloom. 
Gentle and good are the men, they have breathed 
all their days into prayer, 
All their thoughts rise above, shunning the 
Olives below 
Where are the maids. From the hill I look at 
the roof of the cloister. 
As it peacefully lies in the embrace of the 
leaves ; 
But this path I avoid as if mid its rocks dwelt a 
dragon 
Snapping its jaws in my face. So I pass on 
to the next 
Which is the second, and leads to the mill that 
presses the berries, 
Where only men are at work, making the sweet- 
flavored oil. 
Clear is the flow of the brook through the moss 
to the whirl of the mill-wheel, 



94 IN THE OLIVES. 

Friendly the look of the men seeing the 
stranger appear. 
But not the flow of the brook with its babble 
along the fresh channel, 
Not the old rustic mill, not the kind welcome 
of men 
Can detain me from this path, the third one, 
that leads to the Olives 
Down in the valley below whither the maidens 
have gone. 
There at times I can see, as it flits mid the trees 
a red apron, 
Like a small tongue of flame leaping in folds 
from the ground ; 
Or perchance in a flutter of wind I behold the 
white garment. 
As it seemeth to fly, winged with a pinion of 
red ;"! 
For it appears in the distance some bird of grace- 
fullest plumage, 
Crimson doth flow down its breast, snow doth 
reflect from its back. 
Then, oh hear, that merry bright bird with song 
too is gifted, 
Now in the Olives it sings notes that well out 
of the trees 
Wave after wave, until they flow over me up to 
the hill-tops : 
Undulations of hymns thrilled from a joyous 
young heart. 



IN THE OLIVES. 95 

This is the path I am led in by Eros unerring, 
my master — 
Down to the Olives I go, down to the Olives 
I go. 



9. The Metochi. 

Ah I confess, the Metochi I shun — the place of 
calm prayer ; 
Lapped in eternal repose mid the soft plies of 
the limbs, 
Placid it rests as if now in Heaven. Old are the 
Olives 
That around it have grown — sentinels faithful 
and fond, 
Though their trunks, so twisted and scarred, have 
lost their fresh juices ; 
Not a maid can be found who will delay in their 
shade ; 
Into the valley below they look, where sprout the 
young Olives, 
With a mild disdain from the high perch of 
their site. 
Holy the men are who dwell there, devoted to 
prayer incessant ; 
Every moment they turn into the notes of a 
psalm 
That like incense sweet rises up from their cells 
into Heaven : 



96 IN THE OLIVES. 

Now their low chant I can hear from the small 
chapel of Saints, 
Gently accusing me thence for my sins. Shall I 

enter the chapel ? 
No — Eros now is my God, here I am tied to his 

wings; 
He has my soul and has flown long before me far 
down to the valley 
Where the young Olives are, glorious sprouts 
of the Earth, 
That are leaping in sunlight away from the 

gloomy Metochi — 
' Each little leaf on its twig sings a small poem 

of love. 
What will boot all my prayers without any soul ? 
Let me tell thee, 
Body must follow the soul — down to the 
Olives 1 go. 



I. Philemon and Baucis 

In the hut I stopped where Philemon dwelt with 
his Baucis, 
Aged they were and infirm, still they were liv- 
ing alone ; 
Happy their days sped along like the mellowest 
hours of autumn, — 
Hazy and dim to the sight, yet they of sun- 
shine were full. 
Love is here seen in its purity, cleansed from the 
dross of its passion, 
Though the senses subside, still it remains in 
its glow ; 
And it often doth seem in the soul tr redouble 
its fervor, 

7 (97) 



98 IJSr THE OLIVES. 

Love of Psyche it is, bodiless spirit di- 
vine. 
Long they together have lived till each resembles 
the other, 
Time has them moulded to one till they no 
longer need speech ; 
Each doth feel as the other, each doth think as 
the other, 
Though the hearts may be twain, still there is 
felt but one pulse. 
Always they go down together at sunrise into the 
Olives, 
There they remain all the day, culling the 
fruit at their ease ; 
Then at eve they return to their home of delight 
in the cabin. 
Sweetly they lie down to rest, labor and years 
give repose ; 
And in the trance of the night, in the spell that 
is wrought by soft slumber, 
Both are caressed by one song, both of them 
have the same dream. 
Aged Olives they are and wrinkled — but notice 
them closely : 
All the year round on the twigs blossoms are 
bursting: to lio^ht. 
So may I be when Time has crowned me with 
garlands of silver. 



IN THE OLIVE 8. 99 

Though he bend the old trunk, still it shall 

flower anew. 
Yet in my heart I would rather remain the young 

tree of the orchard 
Bound which the maidens will dance with the 

fresh rose in their cheeks. 



2. Cluck, Cluck! 

Look at yon crow as he skims through the sun- 
shine over the treetops ! 
'Tis a dark spot with wings playing mid beams 
of mild light. 
How he rejoices to sport all the day in ethereal 
splendor, 
Though each feather be dipped in the grave 
color of night ! 
List to his note : Cluck, cluck — through the hills 
re-echoing deeply. 
Like the low hollow sound from two quick 
blows on a drum. 
Down the vale he flies, to a dot soon shrinking by 
distance : 
Still his voice can be heard from the black 
speck in the sky. 
Where is he going, I wonder? Cluck, cluck — 
see now, he is sinking 
Down to the orchard below where his dark 
spouse he beholds 



100 IN THE OLIVES. 

Sitting expectant, alone, on the lusty young 
branch of an Olive ; 
Thence too her cluck can be heard, clucking 
her ebony lord. 
That hoarse caw was the note, warm and tender, 
of love — of the crow's love: 
Now he vaults to the twigs that to soft dalliance 
bid. 
There is the silver-green sparkle of leaves, like 
the laughter of waters. 
There are the maids underneath tuning their 
throats for the hymn ; 
Thither too I must go ; Cluck, cluck — the crow 
I must follow, 
Clucking me down to the trees that so much 
music conceal. 



3a I he New GanncnL 

I had wound many hours through tortuous paths 
in the Olives, 
Wasting the minutes with joys under the laugh 
of the leaves. 

When not far from Arachoba, town of the beau- 
tiful women, 
Pearly a fountain sprang out just at the edge 
of the road ; 

In the stream, as it merrily flowed over pebbles, 
stood Vv^ashers — 



in THE OLIVES. 101 

Fifty maidens or more who from the village 
had come. 
Fair was the vision to fall in the eye of the way- 
, worn stranger, 

Healing the jom-ney's fatigue more than a bath 
in the brook. 
There I stopped on the bank and watched the har- 
monious movement 
Flowing in glee out of forms tuned to a rhythm 
unheard. 
In that crystalline water stood many a Phidian 
model — 
Many a snow-white limb dimpled to folds by 
the waves ; 
And they seemed as if all were begotten of anti- 
que sculpture, 
Which an artist of old once may have wrought 
on these hills, 
Or were the daughters breathed into life by some 
• ancient poet, 
As in his rapture he sang over these valleys his 
strain. 
Naked the hinge of the knee is, and naked the 
white is above it, 
While the pale modest thigh hides in the kirtle 
for shame ; 
And the waters are whirled in a fit of supreme 
exaltation. 
As the tremulous rill leaps round the ankles 
below ; 



102 IlSr THE OLIVES. 

Arms are bared to the shoulder while bands are 
in play with the streamlet, 
Eomid the loose garment a zone hardly restrains 
the coy dance 
Led by the fair twin sisters that ride on the swell 
of the bosom : 
Thus in that gallery new wander I long and 
reflect. 
From the brink I touch with mine eye each turn 
of their members, 
Drink the Olympian draughts which are distilled 
from their forms. 
This is my wish : That I were but one little drop 
of the brooklet. 
That I might innocent play round the domains 
of their wealth, 
And unsuspected might brush in my sportiveness 
o'er the white surface : 
Now His the beautiful world wholly forbidden 
to touch. 
But the eye must select — it rests on a deep- 
bosomed maiden. 
Wound are the strands of her hair into long 
tresses of gold. 
Freely they fall down her neck and drop at her 
side to the water. 
Bushy tips of the braid lave in the sport of the 
rill. 
There she stands in the crystal, intent on the glow 
of a garment. 



m THE OLIVES, 103 

Phoustanella 'tis called, ruffled to many a 

ply; 

Even the folds sing a strain in the dexterous hand 
of the maiden, 
Falling in graceful grooves as they grow white 
at her touch. 
When from the bank I addressed her, she turned 
her face from the fountain, 
Wrapped me in eyes of soft blue, gently caress- 
ing with looks 
That I thought I was borne in a dream to the blue 
dome of Heaven : 
*' Give me that garment," I cried, «' long have 
I sought such a garb ; 
Shining reward I shall give thee if I can now but 
possess it, 
If the white folds shall be mine trained to the 
skill of thy hand. 
For my body I long to enwrap in the waves of 
their music, 
And ray soul to attune unto their rhythmical 
flow. 
Maid of Arachoba, thine is the handy- work which 
I shall treasure — 
I shall carry it hence over the sea to my 
home." 



104 m THE OLIVES. 



4. The Mantili. 

I had intended to stop making Delphian hymns 
on the washers, 
But when I see them at work, I cannot bridle 
my verse. 
In the bare limb and its movement of grace there 
is soft attraction : 
It is wicked, some say, still I delight in these 
shapes. 
If I now were at home, I would shun them for 
moral example. 
And my head I would turu quickly a different 
way 
When I saw them; but here propriety slightly 
may slacken, 
No staid dame me beholds — let me indulge 
then mine eye. 
Hundreds of washers there are, now standing by 
groups in the water, 
Swashing the garments about in the clear flow 
of the rill. 
What a clatter of tongues amid gay laughter and 
gossip ! 
All the love in the town now is discussed and 
much more. 
Out of the hundreds one I select, altogether the 
fairest, 



m THE OLIVES. 105 

For without just the one, hundreds and hun- 
dreds are none. 
Thither I loiter and stop on the brink of the brook 
where she washes, 
Quickly she takes up a cup, goes to the head ol" 
the spring, 
Where the gush of the crystalline water first leaps 
to the sunlight : 
To me she offers a drink with a sweet welcome 
of words. 
But an old crone beside her now asks the ridicu- 
lous question : 
Art thou married or not — stranger, at home 
hast a wife ? 
To your question, said I, in this presence there is 
but one answer : 
Not a man would confess though a new bride 
he had led 
Not an hour ago from the church; indeed I am 
certain. 
Not a man would confess that he before ever 
loved. 
Then I threw in the face of the maiden a small 
jet of water 
To whose droplets my lips just had been fei - 
vently touched. 
Thus I secretly sent her a kiss in the dash of 
the crystal — 
How all the washers there laughed ! Hundreds 
were laughing at nie. 



106 I]^ THE OLIVES. 

Yet the maid was not angry, but asked me : 
Hast a mantili ? 
Give it into my hand — let me but wash it for 
thee. — 
So I reached her my handkerchief soiled with the 
sweat of the journey ; 
Under her touch it was changed into a pearl of 
the rill, 
And in the sun she outstretched it on a Parnas- 
sian laurel 
Till my mantili was filled with high Apollo's 
mild glow. 
That is a glorious prize, — a handkerchief full of 
glad sunshine; 
Now I can wipe from my brow all my vexation 
and toil. — 
Long I sat on a stone and looked at the joy of 
her motions, 
While she was working for me with a sweet 
thought on her face. 
But that maiden was washing something beside 
my mantili, 
In her glances she laved every quick throb of 
my heart ; 
And with the beams of her face she filled each 
nook of my bosom. 
So that I carry them there with her fair pict- 
ure enshrined. 



IK THE OLIVES. 107 



5. The Answer of Eros. 



See yon eagle, how proudly he sails round the 
crags of the mountain ! 
Tawny and dark is his suit, stretched are his 
talons and beak, 
And his eye fiercely glistens afar, throws fiery 
glances 
Down to the Olives beneath, — what can he 
mean, do you think? 
Prey — for into the silver-green orchard comes 
the shy pheasant. 
That it may warily taste there a delicious 
repast. 
So in innocence sweetly it feasts and plays after 
dinner 
Hide-and-go-seek mid the rocks till it has 
wearied of sport. 
There — see the swoop — down pounces the rob- 
ber, and soon the poor pheasant 
Is borne up to the clouds to be consumed on 
the cliff.— 
Maiden, beware, who art singing and playing now 
under the Olives, 
The destroyer may come, unto thy hiding-place 
lured 
By the song and the laugh which are rising up 
over the tree-tops : 



108 m THE OLIVES. 

Like the eagle he seeks dainties of innocence 
sweet. — 
These words spake the old rnoralizer, still hinting 
within me ; 
Me he intended to hit, thus then I answered his 
thrusts : 
My little wings are not of the eagle, but of light- 
flving Eros; 
Beak he has none, I affirm, but a sweet mouth 
for a kiss ; 
Nor has he talons, but only the wee pretty hand 
of the baby ; 
And he lives on the air, following fancy's 
bright flowers. 
Look in mine eye, old Goody; — where's the 
fierce flash of the falcon ? 
See ! its soft amorous globe melts in the glance 
of a maid. 



I. The Greek Peasant's Question. 

«' Have you, O stranger, in yoin' country Olives ?" 
the rude peasant asks me, 
As I look up at the limbs hung with large drop- 
pings of jet. 
Ah, Good Friend, I reply, my country produces 
no Olives, 
Carpets of silver-green leaves sparkle not over 
our plains; 
On the wayside you find not these trees with a- 
dome built of berries, 
And with the twists in between holdins^ rich 
layers of fruit. 
There is not seen this light-hearted, delicate sway 
of the tree-tops, 
As they move in the breeze sent from Parnassus 
above ; 

(109) 



110 IN THE OLIVES. 

Nor underneath the branches the graceful dance 
of the maidens, 
In sweet concord attuned to the bright move- 
ment of leaves ; 
Nor is the hymn heard there as it breathes from 
the hearts of the youthful, 
Winning the body to rhythm as in the chorus it 
moves. 
There we sing not, because, I should say, we 
possess not the Olive, 
Work is not seasoned with song, crowned not 
with poesy's. bloom. 
Nor the folds do we own, the immaculate folds 
of the dancers 
Waving soft notes in accord with the glad leaves 
and the lay. 
Yes, the truth must be told — my country pro- 
duces no Olives, 
And by some it is said that they will never 
grow there, 
But I do not believe it. — So I say to the peas- 
ant, 
Who in deep marvel is lost how any land can 
exist 
Wholly without the beautiful world of the silvery 
Olives, 
And all the music and mirth which underneath 
them are born. 



IN THE OLIVES. HI 

I must confess too, now that 1 think of the mat- 
ter more closely, 
I have to wonder myself how without Olives 
man is. 



2. Gunpowder irt Hellas. 

There is one ugly sound I sometimes hear in the 
Olives ; 
Nowhere pleasant to me, here it is doubly ac- 
cursed : 
'Tis the crack of a gun. The fire-red cap and 
shag mantle 
Yonder I dimly can see gliding along through 
the trees ; 
There the hunter stealthily lurks for the hare or 
the pheasant. 
Or for the birds in the twigs at the great feast 
of the fruit. 
Through the orchard afar the report on the silence 
is carried 
Where a transparent repose lay in the beams 
of the sun ; 
All the Olives are frightened to a continuous 
flutter, 
For their enemy comes who is here shooting 
their peace — 
Driving off from their leafy embrace the Par- 
nassian sonofsters. 



112 . ^N THE OLIVES. 

Driving the poesy oif which the glad Olives 
enfolds. 
That rude echo chimes not with the notes of the 
lyre or panspipe, 
Nor with the voices of maids ever preluding 
the hymn. 
But the whi:ff from the gun is the breath of some 
demon infernal 
Which doth obscure in a cloud even Apollo's 
high lamp. 
1 too am frightened, carelessly stretched in the 
shade of an Olive, 
Playing on a soft lute that is attuned to the 
clime ; 
For I did not expect to hear such a sound in this 
orchard 
Where in ages antique I was disporting my 
hours. 
Now I am roused, but the joyous old realm 
departs from my vision, 
At the rude shock of that crack vanishing into 
the years. 
So at once I wake up in this world, yet somewhat 
astonished, 
As a sulphurous smell greets my return to my 
time. 
That was the puff which blew the old world down 
into the new one, 
Blew the whole race with a whiff through all 
the thousands of years; 



IN THE OLIVES. 113 

For OD gunpowder's flash we iiioderns have come 
from old Hellas 
To our realms by the West on either side of the 
sea. 
I too am blown by that puff just while I lie here 
in this orchard, 
Ages on ages I whiz, pressed in a sharp point 
of time; 
Out of the temples of Gods I drop to this Byzan- 
tine chapel, 
Blasted from Delphi the old, down into Kastri 
the new. 



3. The Folly. 

In our world there are many fools, many kinds 
too of folly; 
But the greatest fool mid the great types of 
his kind 
Is the man who in stupid caprice is enraged at 
the Muses, 
For a refusal to grant gifts which are theirs to 
bestow. 
Yet of such folly to day I was guilty, and them I 
berated : 
*^Your stale fount may I shun, never again 
hear your name ! 
Both are always cut up in the hash of merciless 
rhymesters : 

8 



114 m THE OLIVES. 

Men in two thousand years weary have grown 
of that dish. 
Would that old Seismos might sink Castalia into 
his caverns, 
So that never again one single drop of her 
rill 
Would appear on the face of the earth, or flow 
down to the Olives ! 
For some dolt will be found always intent on 
her stream, 
And of her drops he will ever be tippling, 
declaring them sovereieorn 
In all cases of rage from a poetic flea- 
bite. 
Then he will start to scribble in verse his deliri- 
ous frenzies. 
And ascribe them all to his deep draught at 
the spring; 
Though his fancy steps not a Grace but capers a 
Dervish — 
Morbid caprice of disease, not the mild move- 
ment of health.'* 
Thus many voices were chiding around me in 
horrible discord — 
Each one trying to scold louder than all of the 
rest ; 
Into the world of the damned I thought for a 
.time I had fallen. 
Into the Hades new made of the Critic's 
curse ; 



IN IHE OLIVES. 115 

For I imagined that I was one of those critical 
spirits 
Plunged into torture eterne at the mere name 
of the Muse, 
And within me I heard only blasphemy, pain, 
and confusion, 
Just because for a day all the sweet Sisters I 
banned. 
Where they are not, ah, there is the dolorous 
realm of Pluto, 
There are the sunless days passed in damnation 
and ruth. 
Back I rush to the Delphian hill-side and drink 
of its fountain. 
That I be free from the fiends vv^ho are now 
racking oiy soul: 
Never, I swear it, again in my life shall I mock 
you, oh Muses, 
But if you will permit, always your mocker 
I'll mock. 



4. The Kahokian Shopman at Delphi. 

Once on a visit to Delphi there came a Kahokian 

shopman. 
Calico, Candy and Cans, Sugar and Coffee and 

Tea 
Had been the single refrain of his life, his soul's 

sweetest music. 



116 liV THE OLIVES. 

Which underneath evermore had a metallic 
sharp clink. 
When he looked at the Delphian walls written 
over with letters, 
In that work he beheld nought but a pile of old 
rocks ; 
Then I triumphantly showed him a column's 
most beautiful fragment: 
It was a broken stone good for a counter, per- 
haps ; 
Also I stepped off the space and sought to build 
up the old temple 
For his fancy anew, decked with its sculpture 
and frieze, 
Quite as it lay many ages ago in the smile of the 
sungod — 
*' Stick to the facts, the hard facts," was his 
response to my words. 
Here stood the Hall of the Council far overlook- 
ing the valley, 
There the Gymnasium lay, shining with forms 
of the youths, 
Yonder above sat the people beholding the games 
of the Stadion — 
<«What is the good of all that?" asked his 
inquisitive mind. 
Now in our walk let us pass up the rill to the 
cleft of Castalia, 
Where the Muses once rose from the clear 
fountain of pearls. 



IN THE OLIVES. 117 

Singing their strains till the mountain broke open 
this passage to hear them : 
*« ' Tis but a gully, I guess, worn in the cliff 
by this run," 
And he began to grow weary. I said : Let us 
go to the Olives 
Where they reach to the vale down from the 
tops of the hills, 
Forming an ocean of leaves full of points of a 
silvery sparkle — 
«* Silver, Sir, did you say? That is the point 
I would see." 
But the merry young trees were but wood — a lot 
of green saplings — 
And the berries I plucked fresh from the twigs 
he declared 
Crude to his taste and rank to his smell and de- 
formed to his eyesight. 
Still I continued to talk of the Parnassian 
breath, 
And of the manifold play of the jocund leaves in 
the sunbeams, 
And of the laughter of rills as through the 
orchard they Ivnp, 
And of the trill of the birds attuned to the hue of 
the flowers : 
*'A11 that we have at home, better, I think, 
than 'tis here." 
But at last the Greek maiden I pointed out under 
an Olive : 



118 JiV THE OLIVES. 

Look in the depth of her eye dipped in the blue 
of yon sky, 
Notice the Phidian forearm turned to the grace- 
fullest taper, 
And the white bend of her brow swept o'er 
with wavelets of gold, 
And the movement of form that is filling the air 
with its fragrance ; 
'' Oh good lord" he cried ** she is some young 
country wench ; 
Look, she has no stockings, merely a pair of blue 
leggins 
Which do not hide her nude feet slipped in the 
scraggy old shoes." 
Ended our Delphian walk, I conducted him home 
to my cabin. 
Nor could the secret I keep which the dear 
Sisters me told. 
But after bashful pretenses began I to read him 
my poems : 
** Friend, isn't what thou hast read, rather a 
fanciful thing?" 
Ah, no Nymphs he saw in the stream, no Muses 
he heard, but 
Sugar and Coffee and Tea, Calico, Candy and 
Cans. 



IN THE OLIVES. 119 



5. Ditto's Book on Greece. 

Thereunto said the shopman who came from the 
fens of Kahokia: 
Now I have seen all Greece, merely a fraud 
it has been — 
And the words of his voice were pitched in a 
screech of defiance. 
Discontent had her seat just on the curl of his 

lip. 

No one need talk to me now — he continued — I 
know all about it ; 
All that is here I have seen, all too that ever 
was here. 
When I go home, a book I have the intention of 
writing, 
Just in order to show what the delusions have 
been, 
And I purpose to prove to mankind the plain 
proposition, 
That the Greeks are cheats, having deceived all 
the world — 
Aye, all the world, if I be not, perchance, the 
single exception — 
By that language of lies which they have poesy 
called. 
For they said that Castalia here is the fount of 
the Muses ; 



120 Ili THE OLIVES. 

But of its water I drank, yet not a poem I 
made ; 
And I labored a day to climb to the peak of 
Parnassus, 
Those false Sisters to see — only a rock I be- 
held. — 
Ah, my friend, I replied, the market already is 
glutted. 
Shopmen have written ere this many a booklet 
on Greece, 
And very learned Professors who had as great 
talent as shopmen, 
Weighing Olympian Gods as they would sugar 
and tea. 



6. Zaiisca. 

I was passing along on the cliff of steep Pap- 
padeia, 
To the brink I slipped, into the chasm I 
peered. 
Where many hundreds of feet the rocks ]eap 
straight to the bottom, 
Till they reach a dark mouth gaping adown the 
deep gorge. 
I am shaken with shudders sent up from invisible 
monsters, 
As my head I extend o'er the precipitous 
edge; 



IN THE OLIVES. 121 

Out the abysm beneath there darts through the 
eye a keen torture — 
Out the passionate gloom couched far below in 
the rift: 
There lies Zalisca. Scarcely I dare look down, I 
look forward 
To the opposite bank where are huge columns 
of stone; 
Slowly I sink with mine eye on its layers down 
to the wolf-hole, 
From the summit halfway; round it the eagles 
now fly. 
For like fortresses there they have built inncces- 
sible eyries: 
Thence I begin with a look lower, still lower, 
to sink. 
When of a sudden I fall — fall down the dire 
steep in my fancy. 
Whiz along by the rocks, by the wild eagles I 
whiz. 
So I fell — I never could light, but still I kept 
falling 
Down that infernal chasm — never could aet 
on my feet. 
It was a dream of a fall and yet it was horribly 
real ; 
Thus my fancy me tricked, for it would leave 
me no ground. 
But it cheated my eyes with an empty appearance 
of landing, 



222 m THE OLIVES. 

Which would give a fresh start to a new furi- 
ous plunge. 
Finally from the abyss Nymph Zalisca spoke in 
high anger ; 
Thy weak sight cannot reach thus the inside of 
my fane ; 
Now I have punished thy sin, have punished pre- 
sumptuous fancy; 
If thou wouldst come where I am, seek not the 
horrors of night, 
Shun the chaotic chasm forever devoid of the 
sunshine, 
But, above all, my abode seek not with fancy 
alone. 
Go down slowly this mountain, then ascend the 
small valley. 
Every step is firm ground, though somewhat 
long is the road. 
There at once thou wilt enter my door, and I shall 
receive thee, 
There too Apollo will shine just at the mid-hour 
of day. — 
So the Nymph reprovingly said as I turned from 
my gazing, 
Still to be falling I seemed though I was walk- 
ing away, 
For my fancy still sought to keep up that play 
of delusion, 
Like a machine in the brain which in its whirl 
could not stop. 



2iV THE OLIVES. 123 

Such was Zalisca's penalty for the abuse of the 
Muses, 
Some other way I must seek to the enchant- 
ress's grot. 



7. The Olives by Night. 

It is night ; I go out from my hut for a view of 
the Olives, 
That I may see how they look when great 
Apollo withdraws. 
So I cast a long glance far over the sweep of the 
valley : 
Trees are a dark dense coil winding around up 
the hills. 
Only to sunshine do they belong — -e'en the sister 
of Phoebus, 
Mild-glancing Artemis there can not illumine 
the leaves ; 
Yet to-day when I passed underneath them, how 
gaily they fluttered 
As with the sunbeams they played soft inter- 
twinings of love ! 
In the night their glister doth change into dark 
lines of silence, 
Moonlight can not entice from their hid sparkle 
a laugh. 
But beyond them upsprings the huge mountain 
with three-pronged trident, 



124 IN THE OLIVES. 

Like a wraith of despair under the slieen of the 
moon; 
And it seems to threaten the Olives that cower 
below it, 
Sinking to darkness in fright, till they can flee 
to the Dawn. 
At those shapes too I shudder, I haste to my 
cabin in terror — 
Shadows I can not endure, nor the great giant 
up there. 
For I now have become so at one with the sport 
of the Olives, 
That unhappy I am when I behold not their 
dance. 
Then I stretch out on the rug, and speedily grasp 
for my note-book, 
Scribble by flickers of light that a faint taper 
sends forth, 
And I seek to illumine myself from the thoughts 
of the day-time; 
Scarcely a flash can I get out of my memory's 
ward, 
Suddenly then I drop over, a dream — the Olives 
return now. 
All the darkness has fled, Phoebus is shining on 
high. 



IN THE OLIVES. 125 



8. The Same Dream. 

What is the reason the dream-god sends me so 
often one vision? 
Three successive nights has he despatched the 
same dream. 
Seldom his messages hither withstand the light 
of the morning : 
Into Lethe they fly borne on the pinions of 
Sleep. 
This one, however, always persists in remaining 
the day-time, 
Gently it hovers above while I am taking my 
walk 
Through the Olives, whose leaves in a thrill at- 
tune my bright vision. 
Till I am swaying aloft on the vast swell of 
their notes. 
Over the Ocean I pass to my home, transplanting 
the Olive 
Into a golden vale lying afar by the 
West, 
Where flows down to the realms of the sun the 
wonderful River, 
Banding together the world in the soft span of 
its stream, 



126 m THE OLIVES. 

Laughingly joining the summer to winter, the 
winter to summer, 
While on its path each clime plants a fair gar- 
den of fruits. 
On the banks of that river, just where it laves its 
dear city, 
Over a bottom of marl rests the vast surface of 
trees ; 
And the barbarian Boreas seems not to mangle 
their leaflets, 
Which with the sparkle of seas sweep to the 
North and the South. 
Long I looked at the infinite stretch of the silver- 
green Olives, 
As they lay in the sun, waving betimes in the 
wind. 
Quite as much they appeared to rejoice in the 
name of Kahokia, 
As in Delphi's fond name they are rejoicing 
to-day. 
Fruit too they bore, the fairest and richest — 
richer than Delphian — 
All around in the twigs densely the berries 
hung down. 
Just from the soil rose the trees where once was 
the stench of foul water. 
Where only reptiles bred, making their couch 
in the slime ; 



IN THE OLIVES. 127 

There the countless vermin that sting swarmed 
out of the quagmires, 
Pestilence hovered above, ready to pounce on 
its prey ; 
And the only music there heard was the roar of 
the buli-frog 
Mid the million-fold buzz sent from an insect 
world. 
But the Olive now is enthroned which I brought 
from Parnassus, 
Sloughs wear the smile of the Muse, banished 
are fever and noise, 
And the leavesy like the curl of the waters, send 
forth a soft laughter. 
As they join in the dance over the floor of the 
tops ; 
The bland breezes, fair daughters of ^olus, 
gently embrace them, 
Many sweet notes they lisp, as they unite in 
the sport. 
But behold ! a bright circle of forms is wreathing 
the Olives, 
While a glad music intwines into the move- 
ments of grace, 
Youths and maidens have joined their hands into 
links of the chorus, 
Songs now arise from the vale through the 
whole length of the stream; 



128 /ivr THE OLIVES. 

Under the branches where once was heard but 
the discord of insects, 
Hymns sprout forth with the fruit, labor is 
lightened with lays; 
All the great valley that was erewhile but a hor- 
rible jungle, 
With the glad Olives is filled, filled is with 
music and song. 



Book Third. 



Elpinike 



(129) 



ABGUMENT. 

Tlie character ivhich has been JltUing iri the background 
of the Delphic landscape from the beginning, and, whose 
name has bee7i already heard in a passing ivay, now 
moves into the foreground^ and becomes the ceriter 
round which all the scenery, history, memories and 
suggestions of Delphi group themselves, along with 
glimpses into the Past, Present, ayid Future. 



(130) 



€jicki Jfirst. 

I. Sharing the Pomegranate. 

In these verses I wish to build a new temple to 
Fortune, 
For the Goddess to-day showed me a favor 
divine ; 
I shall raise her a temple and deck it with friezes 
of marble 
Which will emblazon her deed worthy of 
glorious Gods. 
For she led me direct to the house where dwells 
Elpmike, 
Whom to behold I had wished all the long day 
of unrest. 
Just at dusk I sauntered around through the lanes 
of the village, 
With a sweet image in mind ta'en from a maid 
I had seen 

(131) 



132 ELPINIKE, 

Giving her horse to drink at a fountain early this 
morning: 
Lorn and unhappy I strayed in a delicious still 
pain, 
When a door was opened that stood on my path, 
and the image 
Flew into body at once, with transformation 
divine. 
Such is always the brightest Olympian present of 
Fortune, 
When the dear shadow she turns into fresh life 
at her touch ; 
So I beheld the pale lines of my fancy to color 
transmuted. 
Till my soul became eye — then too mine eye 
became souL 
That was Elpinike. She spake and besought me 
to enter, 
Enter I did in her home, following footsteps so 
dear; 
From the joist where it hung on a nail she took 
down a pomegranate; 
Which had been plucked by her hand in the 
glad season of fruits ; 
And the heart within it was full of sweet juice 
and of redness. 
Warm with a passionate glow, soft to the lips 
as a kiss ; 
Quickly she broke the hard rind, and quickly she 
peeled o:ff its fragments , 



ELPmiKE. 133 

When the heart was revealed, crimson, trans- 
lucent all through. 
With her fingers gently she parted in twain the 
pomegranate. 
And she reached me the half — half of that 
bright scarlet heart ; 
Just in the middle most deftly she drew the line 
of partition, 
So that each half seemed a whole while it 
remained still a half; 
And no violence rude she employed to make the 
division, 
But the parts of the fruit fell as by nature in 
twain ; 
For the one side had sjrown as if it belonged to 
me only, 
Grown to be given away with the coy blush of 
a maid; 
But the other red side that glowed in her hand 
like a beacon, 
Wary she kept for herself — all she bestowed 
not at once. 
What a joy for the soft-hearted fruit that no power 
convulsive 
Tore asunder its cells filled with the blood of 
its life ! 
Then wx sat down at the hearth by the fire and 
ate the pomegranate. 
Picking out one by one seeds sweetly wrapped 
in the pulp, 



134 ELPINIKE. 

And each seed was a word ensanguined in the 
hearths color, 
And each word was a note hymned by the 
Muses' mild breath. 



2. Hymns Sung and Unsung. 

Here I lie down on the sunlit slant of skyey 
Parnassus ; 
Thousands of hymns in a dance joyfully play 
through my brain ; 
Every line is dipped in the beams that are sent 
from Apollo J 
In me all is transfused to a mild glow by their 
spell. 
Silent the hymns seem to follow each- other in 
endless procession, 
Just their finger-tips touch as they glide by 
through the air, 
And they are formed out of hundreds of 
images, jointed with music: 
While they are flitting along in their sweet 
faces I peer. 
Then from the pageant I snatch one, the shape 
that seems to me brightest, 
And I seek to impose fetters of verse on her 
form ; 
But she refuses to dance and to laugh as she did 
in her freedom. 



ELFINIKE. 135 

Only in freedom she sings joined to her sisters 
in song. 
So that train of translucent dreams in its center 
is broken 
When their beautiful queen falls into measures 
and feet. 
Ah, I feel that the best of my hymns are not those 
which are written, 
Brightest of visions are quenched in the em- 
brace of the word ; 
For they are born in a dance of the spirit and 
share in its movement, 
Led in the musical throng where they are 
joined to their kin . 
Still I shall catch them — the butterflies — e'en 
though many escape me, 
Though their wings of gold sheen rudely are 
brushed by my hand ; 
From their pinions bright scales will remain on 
the tips of my fingers, 
Though the fair phantom be flown, seen in its 
splendor no more. 
So the hymns of the ages drop many deeds into 
Lethe, 
Even the song of the hour leaves many min- 
utes unsung; 
And to-day there are thousands of hymns rising 
up with the moments. 
And with the moments they sink down to ob- 
livion's shades. 



136 ELFIN IKE, 

But in their motion I live — I exist but a eyelet 
of visions 
Into the links of a chain woven by ticks of 
the clock. 
But here comes the maidenly form for which I 
was grasping, 
Not a dream mid dreams, but all alone and 
herself. 
Oh, Elpinike whenever I see the soft turn of thy 
body, 
All my images vain dart at a glance into 
life. 



3. Citrons of Chios. 

To the house I came where dwelleth the fair 
Elpinike ; 
We sat down by the fire that in the chimney 
was lit, 
On the hearth the twigs of the oak and the olive 
were sparkling, 
There on the mats we sat down round the bright 
blaze of the fire. 
Large was the company — youthful and old — 
about her assembled, 
Crowds of suitors and guests who find delight 
in her look. 
Many a story was told of the time of the Great 
Eevolution, 



ELPINIKE. 137 

How Palicaris so bold slew then the barbarous 
Turk. 
Next they sang, sang gaily of wine and of cer- 
tain three maidens, 
Who dispensed to the guests liquid of poesy's 
flame. 
But to me Elpinike came with a jar full of sweet- 
meats. 
Bade me to eat of the fruit — citrons from 
Chios they were, 
Made by her hand of deep skill and then laid 
away for occasion, 
Till the right one should come who could en- 
joy her sweet art. 
Though she w^oiild not confess, I knew it was she 
Vi^ho had made them, 
For her delicate touch in the preserves I could 
taste, 
And the fraoTunce that flows from her look I 
found in each morsel. 
Now mildly flavored anew with the low whis- 
per she breathed. 
Long she stood there before me, pretending to 
hold me the server, 
Longer I caused her to stand uttering words 
for delay 
Sweeter than citrons of Chios— words that were 
sweetened by Eros 
With the glance of the eye and the soft touch 
of Ihc h.'ind. 



138 ELPINIKE. 

Then she reached me a beaker that brimmed with 
Castalia's pure water 
Just from the spring by the rock, redolent 
with a new song 
Fresh from the Muse ; with her face in each drop 
I drank off the crystal — 
Draughts that reach to the soul, quenching its 
thirst by the hymn. 
Now I do nothing but eat of the junkets of fair 
Elpinike, 
With them I drinli of the brook, limpid Cas- 
talia's stream. 



4. The Judgment. 

Tell me what is that voice which I hear, like the 
sound of a trumpet? 
On the dusk air it rides down to the vale from 
the town. 
Some stern duty to men it commands as it were 
from the Heavens, 
Like the final loud blast bidding to judgment 
the world. — 
That sound — 'tis but the horn of the strict 
overseer of Olives 
Summoning all of our folk out of the orchard 
belows 
That he may measure the labor which has been 
done by our fingers ; 



ELFIN IKE. 139 

So we render account daily for that which we 
do.— 
Judgment it is, then ; well, let me be thy judge, 
Elpinike ; 
What to-day hast thou done ? very severe I shall 
be. 
Thou hast gathered, I notice, many a basket of 
olives, 
Here in the sack they all lie — each had a 
touch of thy hand. 
Now as I think of their destiny happ}^ I become 
jealous, 
What I can not obtain, they without asking 
possess; 
For they receive the glance of thine eye, and are 
grasped by thy fingers. 
Then they repose for awhile in the caress of 
thy palm. 
Would that I were an olive that I by thee might 
be gathered, 
Softly be ta'en to thy hand for a sweet mo- 
ment's embrace ! 
Nay, I would like to be crushed in the might of 
its fervidest pressure. 
Till I would redden the palm with the warm 
drops from my breast. 
Nor is this all of thy work, for I see the heart of 
a stranger 
As the chief prize of to-day — which thou didst 
pluck with thine eyes 



140 ELPINIKE. 

W^lien this morning thou wert descending the 
hillside of Delphi : 
Here it lies mid the fruit, mid the dark berries 
it throbs 
In the strain of a hymn and beats time with a 
curious movement : 
It in these Delphian groves thou art detaining 
in song. 
But the just judge releases it not, and this is his 
judgment: 
Thou hast no blame, O maid, thou canst not 
help being fair ; 
Nor can I censure this heart for being the captive 
of beauty : 
Let it sing on in its bonds till it shall sing 
itself free. 



5. The Name Transformed. 

*' What is your name? " — she asked me as if she 

were eager to know it, 
For the laugh that was gay fell into soberer 

tones. 
" What is your name, pray, tell it me?" — thus 

she descends to petition : 
So I look in her eyes as I pronounce her my 

name. 
Then she seeks to repeat it, but the rude sounds 

make her stumble; 



ELPINIEE. 141 

Still I love her mistakes filled with her voice 
and her soul ; 
For the erratic light play of her words doth seem 
a lost rainbow, 
And each lisp of her tongue is the stray note 
of a hymn. 
*' What is your name?" again she demands and 
again I repeat it ; 
Many a lesson she learns syllabled after my 
speech. 
But the melodious blunders that fall from her 
lips I pity, 
Pity the Delphian note tied to a barbarous 
word, 
'' Leave the harsh tones that only belong in the 
throat of a stranger. 
Whisper nought in mine ear but that soft 
music of thine;" 
So I say to her, yet she persists in trying to 
utter 
With exactness my name wound in a wreath of 
sweet sound. 
Eros, the flattering rogue, has shot a bad thought 
in my bosom : 
That the Greek maid by some spell seeks to 
get hold of my name 
And to make it her own. Still daily continued 
her effort 
Till the rude Saxon she tamed to the soft kiss 
of her lips ; 



142 ELPINIKE. 

Now she has learned my name and also pro- 
nounces it rightly, 
Tuned to the accents of love which the fair 
Helen once spoke. 
I confess hitherto my name was not to my 
liking, 
But it I took as it came, from an invisible 
fate, 
Not of my choice or control. But as uttered by 
Greek Elpinike, 
Now I hear with delight what was my horror 
before ; 
For of the rough blocks of sound she has built 
a musical temple, 
Barest rhythmical notes rise from untunable 
speech, 
And in my soul the fond image she wakes of a 
new revelation 
Which I never had dreamed dwelt in the breath 
of a maid ; 
Deep are the throbs that are borne on the air 
that is pulsed from her bosom, 
Borne on the wings of the word which she has 
caught from my lips. 
But not only my name she winds in a garland of 
music, 
Even myself she surrounds with the refrain of 
her voice. 
So that she changes me into a subtle, harmonious 
measure, 



ELFWIKE. 143 

And all the day I can hear choruses over the 
heights ; 
Fain would I swoon forever away to a hymn of 
her breathing, 
Till each word of my voice rayed the full 
grace of her form. 
Thus she gently transforms me along with my 
name and my language, 
The whole world she transforms into her 
melody sweet ; 
All the trees of the forest and all the stars of the 
Heavens — 
Even the soul of man hymns to the sway of 
her song. 



6. The Draught of Castalia. 

Why in such rapturous mood do I walk through 
the Olives this morning? 
Something within me has wings and is attempt- 
ing to fly ; 

For my feet have no weight and are set on the 
earth with an effort ; 
Elpinike I saw leading her horse down the 
hill 

On whose slant are strown the high rocky nests 
of the Delphians, 



144 ELPINIKE. 

By them spiti called — built on the rock out 
of rock ; 
Soon she stopped at the rill which flows from 
the source of the Muses, 
Me she invited to drink, scooping her cup in 
the stream ; 
So I drank off the draught — in each drop there 
sparkled a verselet, 
Then the beaker she took, drinking herself of 
the stream. 
Sweet was the laugh of the brook o'er the peb- 
bles, yet sweeter the maiden; 
Both in beauty seemed one, both in the soul 
sang a hymn. 
Stooping near to the current she bathed face and 
hands in the water, 
When like a nymph she arose out of the crys- 
talline stream ; 
Over her cheek had spread the soft glow of the 
dawn rosy-fingered, 
And her form was a dream sent from some 
Goddess of old. 
Well I know that then she was touched by one of 
the Muses 
Reaching out of their brook where they have 
always their home; 
For by hand divine had her body become a sweet 
poem, 



ELPINIKE. 145 

Which all her motions sang tuned to the 

softest refrain. 
Still on my heart-strings now I can hear the 

strains of that music 
As through the Olives I walk, dreaming of 

what I beheld. 



7. The Delphian Weaver. 

I am seeking some word to express what I feel 
in this sunlight. 
As through the village I go, threading around 
in the lanes; 
Quite impossible 'tis to find any name for the 
humor, 
Which refuses to slip into the trammels of 
speech; 
But Tranquillity let it be called for the sake of 
these verses, 
Since they demand some word, though not 
exactly to fit. 
Tranquil I saunter along, the village also is 
tranquil, 
Both of us have the same mood, both of us 
seem all alone; 
For the people have gone to the fields — to the 
Olives and vineyards: 
Labor is lord of the place, busy he keepeth his 
folk. 

10 



146 ELPINIKE. 

Hark! through the passionless phiy of the sun- 
beams falls a low music, 
Like the chord of a lyre by a weird finger-tip 
touched ; 
Into this radiant repose so softly the tones are 
transfused. 
That they seem to be one with the calm soul of 
the hour, 
And to embosom within their lull some speech- 
less emotion. 
Which on the air of to-day rests in serenest 
delight. 
But what causes that sound? On tip-toe I slip 
to the dwelling 
Out of which wells to the sun all that sweet 
fountain of notes ; 
Open the window stands — sly curious glimpses 
I cast there ; 
Look! it is but a loom, ancient in form and 
much worn. 
But the hand of deft Elpinike is plying the shut- 
tle ; 
There she sits on the stool — slightly she tips 
it aside 
That it move with her body, which steadily back- 
wards and forwards 
Sweeps with a manifold grace flowing down 
into the threads. 
Out of her fingers the shuttle doth dart through 
the warp like a dolphin 



ELPINIKE. 147 

Under the sea, >vhile the woof thrills at the 
touch of her skill. 
Soon she rouses the loom into singing through all 
of its timbers, 
And she subtly entwines in its refrain her own 
self. 
For she builds a sweet poem out of the move- 
ments of body 
Sent in soft waves through the room with the 
deep throbs of her soul. — 
Tell me, I beg thee, v/hat art thou thinking 
about, Elpinike? 
Much would I like to be told — something of 
joy it must be. 
Thus to attune thy body, and even the loom and 
the shuttle. 
That they unite in one strain with the glad 
sport of the rays. — 
She replied : For thee I am weaving a white 
phoustanella ; 
When thy costume I see, deeply ashamed I 
feel; 
All those drab dappled garments of Franks, the 
tasteless barbarians. 
Throw now quickly away that thou appear in 
new dress ; 
Truly this is no place for them here in the dells 
of Parnassus, 
Even the child in the field laughs at their color 
and shape. 



148 ELPINIKE. 

Yet not one but a dozen, nay I a hundred shall 
make thee ; 
Hence in secret I weave busily all the day 
long. 
Then my hope shall be full when thou movest in 
folds like the chorus, 
And each fold is a note sung to the tread of 
the youths ; 
More than a hundred fair garments — with 
rhythm of song I shall fill them, 
Whose clear strain thou wilt hear as they en- 
circle thy form. — 
So she arranged the weft that ever a harmony 
subtle 
Flowed from the quick-flying threads after the 
stroke of the loom ; 
Every thread had a thrill in accord with the 
whole of the music, 
For it was touched by the thought that was in- 
spiring the maid: 
And that thought was of me when I would ap- 
pear in her vesture — 
Graceful white folds falling down, echoing 
softly her soul. 



8. The New Didaskali. 

When I go now on my walk through Delphi, every 
one knows me, 



ELPINIKE. 149 

Gives a familiar salute with a fair word or a 
nod, 
And they call me Didaskuli — that is, the Master 
or Teacher, 
With a strange guess at my life, hinted per- 
chance in my face. 
I accept the kind title and always return friendly 
greeting 
To every nod of the head, to every smile of 
the eye. 
Children no longer look up and laugh at the 
foreigner's costume. 
But they will follow my steps, gently take 
hold of my hand, 
Babbling their little delights in many a word of 
old Homer, 
And these words too I greet like the dear faces 
of friends. 
Even the mother will stop the full sweep of her 
loom to salute me, 
As she sits weaving the threads for the phous- 
tana's white folds. 
With the Papas too, the priest, I oft take a stroll 
up the mountain — 
Dark-haired, long-robed priest, with his hair 
parted like Christ's 
Just in the middle, and falling loosely over his 
shoulders ; 
Kindly and good is the man, with not a stain 
on his soul. 



150 ELFIN IKE. 

Hours pass unnoticed as over the valley we look 
from the summit. 
Talking of things far away on the wide world's 
other half 
Where is my home by the Eiver. But with 
Elpinike I play now 
Teacher all the day long, teaching her mouth- 
wrenching words 
Ta'en from my language — words that before 
never flowed from her tongue-tip : 
Willing the master doth work, willing too 
seemeth the maid; — 
For she keeps asking : What is the name of this 
thing in English? 
So I utter the sounds which she attempts to 
repeat ; 
O'er the rough vocables then she skips like a 
brook over boulders — 
Still her stammer I love, for it is fair as her- 
self, 
Even new beauty reveals, for she always resem- 
bles Castalia 
When a rock may be cast into the flow of its 
stream ; 
For it will ripple and warble around the ugly in- 
truder. 
Making a melody new sung from the rill of the 
Muse; 
Were there naught in the way of the stream, the 
beautiful water 



ELPINIKE. 151 

Onward would flow in its course, lisping not 
even a note, 
But with the babble and dash of its drops now a 
hymn it is singing 
In the struggle it makes for its own happy 
repose. 
Often merely a pebble thrown into pearly Cas- 
talia 
Tunes her to sweetest of notes which she be- 
fore never sang. 
So in that streamlet I throw a large stone or per- 
chance a small pebble 
Which the clear waters embrace with a pellucid 
soft throb. 
Such is the way that 1 teach Elpinike the words 
of my language, 
Which with her musical breath she doth con- 
vert to a song. 
Sweet are all her mistakes, for they drip with 
melodious honey, 
Sweeter by far is her mouth twisted to utter 
my words, 
And the rude sounds of my voice that through 
her soft lips are but spoken 
Changed are at once to a strain that hath the 
breath of the Muse. 
But the day on which the Greek maiden has 
learned to talk English, 
Shall a holiday be for the whole Delphian 
world, 



152 ELPINIKE, 



And a great pomp of the God that moves with 
the notes of high music 
I myself shall arrange to an Olympian 
hymn. 



9. The Delphian World. 

Industr}^ sends not the cloud of its smoke through 
the Delphian valley, 
The black vomit of coal is not beheld from 
high flues, 
Nor can be heard the unmusical hum that floats 
from great cities. 
Crazing the ear and the soul with the mad 
sounds of unrest. 
Not a wagon is here, not even two wheels with 
their axle ; 
And if they were now here, there is no road in 
the town. 
Not the hub of a cart can be found in the pre- 
cincts of Delphi, 
Merely a sculptured wheel once I beheld on a 
stone. 
From these ways is absent the vehicle's rumble 
and rattle. 
Dust defiles not the robes, silver and green, of 
of the trees. 
Nor does soot in the Heavens besmirch the gold 
beams of Apollo, 



ELPINIKE. 153 

Nor on Earth does it soil here the white folds 
of the youths 
And of the maids, as they joyously move to the 
step of the chorus : 
Heaven and Earth are two notes blent into one 
sweet accord. 
Marble would glisten to-day, as if it were in the 
old temple 
Which on this hillside was perched with the 
bright column and frieze ; 
Many the far-darting gleams it would send down 
over the valley, 
On every sunbeam a thrill thence it would 
pulse to the eye. 
Nor has Castalia, pure virgin, been soiled by the 
ooze of the sewer, 
But the sweet Nymph has a face sparkling, 
translucent with smiles. 
Steam, the rude blower and puffer, and always 
in a great hurry 
Has not disturbed the repose that still envel- 
ops these hills. 
What then is here, dost thou ask? Let me tell 
thee — 'tis the glad Olives, 
'Tis the poetical life, visions outside of the 
world, 
'Tis the fair setting of nature for each appearance 
of beauty, 
'Tis the hymn that is sung both by us mortals 
and Gods ; 



154 ELPINIKE, / 

And still here are the folds and the form of divine 
Elpinike, 
Fairest of maids on the Earth, dream of what 
Helen once was. 
Smut from Industry's chimney, dust from Com- 
merce's highway, 
Have not blotched her pure robes, have not 
begrimed her white limbs. 



I. The Rise of the Nymphs. 



Never ask me what I am going to do on the mor- 
row — 
Whether I Delphi shall leave, or shall remain 
yet awhile — 
I do not know, Good Host, for I cannot form 
any purpose: 
All my intentions are bound with the tight 
cords of a God ; 
'Tis a small merry God whose life is merely to 
daily, 
Yet his linked little arms strong are as Hercu- 
les' limbs. 
To the endless caprice of his wings on my back I 
am fastened, 
Ever together we sport round the new flowers 
of Spring, 

(155) 



156 ELPINIKE. 

And we scent in each blossom the freshest Par- 
nassian fragrance, 
Even the honey we sip, dripping it into a 
hymn. 
Only so much of myself I can tell thee : down to 
the Olives 
Once at least I shall go, fondly there wasting 
the hours. 
For there always the maidens are near, and still 
nearer is dreamland — 
Both even melt into one under the dance of the 
leaves. 
There I lie on the grass by the runnel of pearly 
Castalia 
Mid the trees, while I list to the small voices 
of Nymphs, 
If perchance some low little whisper of theirs 
may be uttered, 
That will redouble my joy, turning the min- 
utes to hymns. 
Long in waiting I lie without any note of their 
presence. 
Till Elpinike appear on the green brink of the 
stream . 
Then at once the coy Nymphs are starting to 
rise from the water. 
Graceful and joyous they rise out of the ripple 
serene; 
Softly the lilies are peering above the crystalline 
surface, 



ELPINIKE. 157 

And their bosoms unfold whitest Parnassian 
snows ; 
All undraped are their forms of delight — sweet 
Nature's own daughters, 
Born here into the world, loosed from the 
trammels of shame 
Which jealous custom has thrown over beauty. 
But now in Castalia 
They are free from their bonds, free from the 
prison of clothes. 
This is the reason why so intently I peer in that 
fountain ; 
Always some bathers divine I can behold in its 
depths. 
Out of the long dripping tresses of jet they are 
pressing the water; 
Mark the twinkle of hands laid on the locks 
that are dark. 
Under the glassy transparency purling over the 
pebbles 
I behold the fair limbs tremulous in the clear 
wave : 
Quite enough of Olympian beauty to wake soft 
suggestion, 
As the outlines of white swim in the wavering 
stream. 
Slowly they come up the shelve of the bank 
from the watery mirror, 
Shining their bodies arise, marbles that move 
into life, 



158 ELFINIKE. 

And at each step they bring to the vision fresh 
raptures, revealing 
Some new perfection of form hitherto lost in 
the wave. 
There at last all the Nymphs of the stream are 
standing before me, 
As the Goddesses stood once before Paris, the 
judge 
Judging the boon of the world. The hours have 
flown into seconds. 
Time has a thousand new wings freshly put on 
for his flight. 
While I am lying and looking, entranced in 
Olympian visions : 
Life is with them too short, yet is without them 
too long. 
Smite me dead at this view, I would pray, that 
never another 
May hereafter intrude into the scope of mine 
eye; 
Or this lot would I choose, O mysterious fates of 
existence, 
Let me eternally live with this fair dream in 
my soul; 
For the dull life of man may be worth immortal- 
ity's dower, 
If it some image embalm that is immortal in 

joy- 

Such are the beautiful shapes that start up from 
the brook of Castalia, 



EL PIN-IKE. 159 

When on the brink thou dost stand, O Elpinike 

my fair, 
At my side here under the Olives, the famous 

green sproutings, 
Which at the view of the Nymphs quiver with 

love in each leaf. 



2. The Empty Sarcophagus. 

Notice, O Dearest, this tomb of marble that lies 
in the vineyard. 
Stained with the rust of the years, gnawed by 
the frost and the rain ; 
Yet in old Delphian days it was perfect and white 
as the linen 
Which then shrouded the form laid in its 
snowy embrace. 
This was the lid of the tomb and on it is sculp- 
tured the princess — 
She who once must have lived, hence she who 
once must have loved. 
Still in the stone you can see the white folds 
wave down her fair body, 
As on the cushion she lies propping her head 
with her arm ; 
And the neat zone round her waist hath the span 
of the hand of a lover 
Just beneath the shy breast hinting the first 
thought of youth. 



160 ELPINIKE. 

From the hem of the loose-iiowing vestment is 
peering the ankle, 
While the lines of the limbs upwards are traced 
in the folds. 
But the soft curves of her body are only alive in 
this fragment, 
The fond clasp of those arms long since has fal- 
len to dust. 
And the hue of the eyes, once brimming with 
.flashes of Eros, 
]Mow forever is lost in an impassive blank 
stare ; 
What thinkest thou has become of the millions 
on millions of treasure 
That poured out of those lips at the low whisper 
of love? 
Lost, all lost forever and ever. Come then, and 
quickly ; 
For each moment is winged bearing away in 
its flight 
Opportunity: life is the use of opportune mo- 
ments ; 
Swift, now give me thine eyes raying with 
sweetest desire ; 
And, may I ask it? — with violence throw thy 
embraces around me. 
That I may see in thy glance all the bright 
rainbows of life. 
And be chained to thy breast in the tight living 
links of thy fetters. 



ELPINIKE. 161 

Ere thy body be chilled into this stone on a 

tomb. 
Earth is the happy abode of love with its fount of 

caresses : 
Hades will cut them all off — quick, let each 

minute be gain. 



3. Retrospection and Connfort. 

'Tis not every day Elpinike I find in gay 
humor : 
For sometimes she looks back to her bright 
days in the past ; 
Retrospection for all is a sigh-heaving work of 
the spirit, 
But for the Grecian maid ever is double the 
pang. 
'* See yon dwelling, inwards have fallen the roof 
and the rafters, 
Only the walls now stand — they too are rifted 
with breaks. 
Many a tendril and vine have begun to creep over 
the ruins, 
In their luxuriant folds soon will be hidden each 
stone. 
Once we there lived, and yet can be seen the 
form of my lattice 
Which the foliage trains still to its winding 
embrace. 

11 



162 ELPINIKE. 

Everywhere overrun is my garden with weeds 
and with brambles, 
Though pretty flowers peep out from the rank 
growth of the soil. 
But behold here also the fragments of some 
ancient temple 
That once stood on this spot, far overlooking 
the vale ; 
Never again will a mortal be able to put them 
together 
Into the whole of that fane as it once rose on 
this height. 
Over the hill-side are scattered the beautiful bits 
of white marble. 
Often I gather them still, piece them in fancy 
to one. 
They were broken by Seismos, the dark-minded 
shaker of Delphi, 
Once he the temple destroyed, he is our enemy 
yet; 
Even our modest abode he smote and upheaved 
in his anger ; 
Here deserted it lies, still by the flowers be- 
loved. 
Often my father has told me with sighs, this 
house was my dower. 
All the wealth that I have now is reduced to 
these stones, 
And my inheritance, splendid of old, is invested 
in ruins — 



ELPINIKE. 163 

Seismos my dower has seized, dowerless now I 
am left. 
Once I possessed for myself this beautiful dwell- 
ing and garden, 
Many suitors I had from all Parnassian 
towns, 
When to my Delphian home there came the time 
of convulsion; 
Now all alone I must mourn, left a poor dower- 
less maid." — 
Cease thy plaint, Elpinike, sorrow becomes not 
thy presence ; — 
Think, a dower thou hast richer than any on 
earth. 
Has not the world ever wooed thee, and sought 
to inherit thy beauty? 
Seismos may rave in his wrath, thou in thy 
ruins hast all. 
Part of thy wealth may be wasted, still thou art 
queen of Parnassus, 
Holding melodious sway over the songs of its 
youths ; 
Look now at me who have crossed the broad 
oceun simply to see thee, 
Simply to curry thy face back to my home in 
my soul. 



164 ELPINIKE, 



4. The Festooned Column. 



Here in this alley there lies the fragment of some 
ancient column, 
Half imbedded in soil, tipped to one side in its 
fall; 
See the shape of the flower there sculptured in 
happiest outline. 
Just in the bloom of its growth with all the 
leaves on the stalk. 
Even in marble it has a fresh look as if blowing 
in springtide, 
Though rude handfuls of Time long have been 
flung on its form ; 
Gently it clings to the stone and lovingly winds 
round the pillar, 
Yet it turns to my glance with a soft smile in 
in its eye. 
So art thou, divine Elpinike, the flower of 
Delphi, 
Ancient thou art, I should say, just in the bud 
of thy youth ; 
For if the Delphian priestess now were alive in 
her beauty, 
She thy form would assume, robed in the waves 
of white folds. 
But though so young, thou art hid, methinks in 
the ages of Delphi, 



ELPmiKE. 165 

Beautiful flower to-day sprung from a fancy 
of old. 
Note but this leaf, how graceful it lies in the 
curve of the marble, 
Then another succeeds — half of it only you 
see ; 
Then still further below is beheld the mere tip of 
a leaflet, 
All the others are hid in the dark tomb of the 
ground. 
But the day will come when the leaves shall leap 
from their cover, 
And the day will come when Elpinike shall 
bloom, 
Now I am going to dig from the rubbish this 
column of flowers. 
Piece together its parts, cleanse from the dirt 
every line, 
Set up the column in light that again it may sun 
itself proudly: 
Then what a fragrance will rise out of that 
flowery shaft ! 



5. Elpinike's Dream. 

Tis not the first, not the second nor third time 
that I have listened 
To the tale of thy dreams — was Elpinike's 
reply. 



166 ELPINIKE. 

What is the reason I love thee? Because thou 
art a good dreamer — 
Well do I know thou canst dream better awake 
than asleep. 
Now it is my turn — list then while I shall tell 
thee a vision 
Which ingrains all my life both in the day- 
time and night. 
Once mid these hills and valleys I passed a sunny 
existence, 
Though between now and then ages have thrust 
all their wrath. 
Full of action heroic a youth I sprang down the 
mountain, 
In each motion of limb felt I the might of a 
God; 
And as I wrought, I sang in harmonious measures 
of beauty, 
To my action I sang fitting the voice to the 
hand. 
Nay, each feat, each movement dropped of itself 
into music. 
Every deed was a song, every song was a 
deed. 
Suddenly then on the side of these hills I was 
changed to a flower, 
Flowerthat merely was fair while here inactive 
it bloomed. 
Thousands and thousands of years I continued to 
grow on the hill-side, 



ELPINIKE. . 167 

All men my beauty admired, sought too me 
often to pluck ; 
Some dug me out by the roots and bore me to 
far-distant countries, 
For a while I would thrive nursed in the warmth 
of their love. 
Still of the pang I never was rid that I dwelt 
among strangers, 
So I wilted at heart — then I would die from 
the soil. 
But when elsewhere I drooped I continued to 
bloom on Parnassus, 
And my fragrance I threw into each nook of the 
world. 
But they treated me as they would treat some 
small pretty flower. 
They would sport with my buds, breathe in my 
heart's rich perfume. 
And would admire the shape of my leaves be- 
dewed of the Graces, 
Oft in their rude native clay sought they to 
copy my form. 
Oh how tired I grew of being forever a 
flower ! 
Longing for sinews and blood sought I the 
man-making deed. 
Once I dreamed that I rose like a youth — the 
ancient Achilles — 
For the armor I sprang, though in the dress of 
a maid ; 



168 ELPINIKE. 

Over the tops of the hills there came to me blasts 
of a trumpet 
CalliDg me back to the life which I once led in 
the world ; 
Up from the ground leaped the flower — anew I 
was storming old Ilium, 
Nobly I sang of my act, nobly I acted my 
song. 
But again I was slain by divine irreversible 
arrow — 
Then with my death I awoke, just as to Hades 
I fell. 
Still in my heart, though awake I may be, I have 
a deep longing, 
. For — I can not tell what — still a deep longing 
I have. 



6. The Cure of Ennui. 

As I arose from ray cot, I had a disgust this 

morning, 
Which had crept in my soul during the visions 

of night. 
And I said to myself: '< To-day I'll not make 

any poems, 
For I am tired to death, dreaming so much in 

the sun. 
Of the ceaseless procession of fancies fully I'm 

sated, 



EL PIN IKE. 169 

Proper it is some rest now 1 should have from 
the throng ; 
Grant me a day without the Muses, without the 
Greek maiden, 
Oh for one day of repose, free from the Olives 
and leaves ! 
Let Castalia &ow down to the sea without giving 
me trouble, 
And the Nymphs in the rill bathe out of reach 
of mine eye." — 
So my course I direct to the rocks, the bare rocks 
on the mountain, 
And as bare as a rock is the white page of my 
brain. 
Also I go to Krissa, prosaic in dress and in cus- 
toms. 
Freed from the memories old which on the 
Delphian stones 
Are engraved everywhere that they speak with 
the breath of Apollo : 
Now mine ears I have stopped to the sweet 
notes of their voice. 
Then I scourge from my presence each rapturous 
child of my fancy. 
Till in terror it flees, seeking a nook in the 
clouds ; 
Almost with anger out of the air I smite every 
image 
That for a moment may dance, trying to flatter 
mine eye. 



170 EL PIN IKE. 

But above all other shapes Elpinike I shunned in 
the Olives, 
During one day I resolved not to behold the 
Greek maid. 
Strictly my promise I kept until the first shade 
of the nightfall, 
When I went by the spring, thinking of nought 
in my mood. 
There she was standing right in the line of my 
eye — the enchantress — 
Purpose melted away like a thin frost in the 
sun. 
Home I am driven amid the incessant wild dance 
of the visions 
That had snapped the weak thread tymg them 
down in their cells ; 
All the orgies of fancy broke loose in a fierce 
Bacchic frenzy. 
To revenge the restraint put on one Delphian 
day. 
Bring me a light, O hostess — - where is my paper 
and pencil? 
For these riotous shapes I must enchain in my 
verse ; 
Ere they will cease, I must cast them in musical 
far-shining fetters : 
If the right word I can catch, then I am frccu! 
of their throng. 



ELPINIKE. 171 



7. Greek Mockery. 

Mockery was to-night the new strain of bright 
Elpinike, 
Grecian mockery too, drenching me through 
with its spraj ; 
And there was salt in that dash of her spirits 
from oceans of humor, 
Nor could refuge I find as it would splash in 
my face. 
First she mocked my gait with the strut and stride 
of an actor, 
Then my titter she mocked with a low titter 
herself ; 
Turns of my head, the roll of mine eye, my 
hands' thoughtless gesture 
With my Humph and my Ha — even my silence 
she mocked. 
So I was forced to look at myself in the mirror 
of Comus ; 
And my accent I heard, say what I might to 
th:it Greek: 
All the twists and turns of my tongue in speak- 
ino'her lano^uasre 
Were throw^n back on my ear trebly contorted 
and gnarled, 
While a thousandfold mimicry wantonly played 
in her features. 



172 ELPINIKE. 

To the words of her speech adding much salt 
of their own. 
Truly to-day tart Comedy's Muse held sway in 
Castalia, 
And from the fount to the maid handed a mask 
as she drank 
Early this morning, when from the village she 
passed to the Olives: 
For each morning she drinks out of a wonder- 
ful cup 
Wrought both outside and inside with many a 
figure of fancy ; 
E'en on the rim the clear draught touches her 
lips through a dance 
Wreathed of the bodies of maidens and youths 
to a circle of garlands, 
Whom the Graces bedew with all their fra- 
grance of form. 
Also the cup is reached by a Muse to her out of 
the fountain 
Bubbling forth from the depths, dark and un- 
known, of the Earth. 
Every day from some one of the Sisters she has 
inspiration. 
Drawn from Castalia' s draught which she has 
drunk in the morn. 
So the Nine take turns in the gift that her days 
may all differ: 
Thus fair poesy's dreams line her laborious 
hours, 



ELFIN IKE. 173 

And in each jet of her humor there plays a fanci- 
ful rainbow 
Leaping in bright-colored mirth out of my 
reach to the skies. 
There — just now she was mocking me whilst I 
spoke of the Muses ; — 
Then the Olives she mocks — mocks e'en my 
love for herself. 
But at last I caught her and kissed her: " Mock 
that, merry mocker, 
Just as oft as you wish;" only my language 
she mocked. 



8. The Triumph of Eros. 

Certainly all the hours to-day I was laughed 
at by Eros, 
For the triumphant young scamp led me astray 
from my plan. 
As I sauntered along, projecting a ne\v^ mighty 
poem 
That would reveal all the Gods, mysteries deep 
would unfold, 
That would the universe set to new music and 
make me immortal, — 
Into the Olives I strolled, secretly fanned by 
his wings. 
Suddenly there, as I wandered around, I met 
Elpinike : 



174 ELPINIKE. 

Eros, the rogue, was my guide, always he plays 
me such pranks. 
Not a step further I went, I could not move a 
step further; 
There I had to remain till of his spell I was 
free. 
So the flexible rod I grasped, and at once began 
beating 
On the limbs of the trees till the ripe berries 
would fall ; 
Long I labored and hard, for under the branches 
the maiden 
Was with her mother at work, picking the 
fruit from the ground. 
When each twig of the tree I had bared of its 
delicate burden, 
And a dark layer of fruit wound through the 
blades of the grain, 
Then for hours I stooped and helped her gather 
the berries; 
Simply a look was my pay, furtively wreathed 
in a smile, 
As her hood she adjusted over her chin and her 
forehead. 
Always trying to hide what she was careful to 
show. 
Meanwhile I was attentively talking to the dear 
mother 
Of small things far away : mothers have also 
their charm. 



ELPINIKE. 175 

Thus I was bound in a chain that was linked with 
successions of glances 
There the trees underneath, nor could I stir 
from the spot. 
Freedom's wildest delight I had in the trammels 
of prison, 
All the while too a hymn swelled in my bosom 
suppressed. 
While I was thralled beneath the green leaves in 
the laugh of his fetters, 
Eros fluttered in sport over the tops of the 
trees; 
Often I saw just the tip of his wing or the point 
of his arrow, 
As he would flit through the twigs, leaving a 
radiint film 
That would hang in the air for a moment then 
pass into nothing ; 
When I looked for his form, always he 
vanished away. 
Often too over my head I heard the low chuck 
of his titter, 
As he would giggle in glee, mocking my limbs 
in the gyves. 
So the young scapegrace till nightfall o'er me 
continued to triumph, 
Badgered me there with his jibes as I lay 
helpless in bonds ; 
And instead of the mighty magniticent poem I 
planned there. 



17G ELPINIKE. 

Now I have written these small tiniest verses 
of love 
Dictated madly by him, the tyrant of soul and of 
body: 

Only disgust I can feel now as the poem I 
read. 
Still, Elpinike, meet me again in the Olives to- 
morrow. 

Thou art the poem thyself which I would put 
into verse. 



9. Stephane. 

A new maiden I met in my stroll through the 
Olives — Stephane ; 
She had one eye of blue that in its depth showed 
a sky, 
While the other was black and was lit with fiery 
glances ; 
Eros had into them both shot all the might of 
his dart. 
When I went up and talked to the maid, I was 
greatly embarassed 
Which of the eyes to address, each one de- 
manding my look; 
Each was a jealous tyrant, shamefully lording the 
other, 
Each had a spy of her acts following just at 
her side. 



ELPINIKE. 177 

Each of those spheres I loved all alone, but both 
not together, 
Separate each I would seek, both I would flee 
for my life. 
'Tis not easy to manage two lovers though kept 
far asunder, 
But if they happen to meet, both may be lost 
by a look. 
What a torture I felt in answering two diverse 
glances ! 
For whichever I chose, that was the end of my 
joy. 
Only when into the one burning look two eyes 
may be melted, 
Is the fervor redoubled till it flames down to 
the soul. 
But alas ! now the glances are twain — to each 
other are hostile — 
With two looks from one face, tell me, I pray, 
what to do. 
This misfortune, however, was not the end of my 
troubles : 
Elpinike beheld as I conversed with that 
maid. 
Jealousy then for the first time she showed in a 
frown on her visage, 
Saying: which eye dost thou love — is it the 
blue or the black ? 
In one body she has two souls, each pulling 
asunder : 

12 



178 ELFIN IKE. 

Ha, two sweethearts in one fine it must be to 
possess. 
Wive her, I pray, and then thou wilt have two 
wives in thy household, 
Though her sweet person be one in the embrace 
of thine arms; • 
And whenever she looks in thine eyes that are 
brimming with rapture, 
I defy thee to tell which of thy wives it may 
be. 
So thy kisses must always be halved for concord 
domestic, 
Lest the one of her looks eat up the other in 
wrath. 
In that quarrel of glances thy life will be merry 
with asking : 
Please now, what says the blue? what says the 
black, if it please ? 
Go thy ways — thou art double thyself as the 
eyes of Stephane, 
Thy false heart has two beats, thou hast two 
masks in one face. 



10. Not Yet Ready. 

Thrice already have I resolved on departure from 
Delphi, 
Thrice has my purpose been smit by the strong 
hand of a God, 



ELPINIKE. 179 

So that it prostrate has kiin in my bosom and 
helplessly quivered, 
Faint were its struggles to rise after that blow 
from above. 
But again there comes to my soul the pang of 
decision, 
For the hours of my stay haste to their limit 
in time ; 
Shall I remain still longer, or shall I set out 
to-morrow? 
Shall I quit the bright fount with all its pearls 
still unstrung? 
Shall I suddenly leave the fair image and stop 
making poems? 
Shall the Delphian days live or be changed to 
a dream? 
Now in my life they are real, deep-linked in the 
chain of my moments. 
But they must lapse when I leave into jDale 
Memory's shades. 
Yet it surely is time I should start. By my 
thoughts torn asunder, 
I go down to the vale, under the Olives I 
walk ; 
Every leaflet is stirring its wings to fly from the 
tree tops, 
Pinions to me it doth give that I take part in 
its flight ; 



180 ELPINIKE. 

And the green millions with silver-starred sparkle 
now dance in the sunlight, 
Till their lustre and sport seem to be part of 
myself. 
Under the fairest young tree now I saunter — I 
find Elpinike — 
Purpose again is laid out by a soft dart of the 
God. 



I. All in One. 

Cast thy look upwards —yonder glistens the snow 
of Parnassus, 
Downward now let it fall — there is the glow 
of the rays ; 
Winter thou seest above, while below in the vale 
is the summer. 
Both an influence fair lend to the eye and the 
soul. 
But at my feet here cometh the Sj3ring leaping 
out of the mountain, 
With young flowers and buds in his soft finger- 
tips held. 
Seasons now fly not in terror away from tho face 
of each other, 
But together they dwell, for they are brothered 
in joy, 

(181) 



182 ELPINIKE. 

And to-day they are dressed in light folds of 
azure translucence — 
All can be seen through the haze, yet too the 
haze can be seen. 
The bright world is beheld in a dream behind its 
blue curtain, 
Still that curtain so fine wondrously too is be- 
held; 
While it is subtly revealing fair Nature, itself is 
revealed, 
While it others adorns, 'tis thus adorned 
itself. 
So art thou, Elpinike, here in the midst of the 
Olives, 
Through thee I see all the world, clearly re- 
flected and new; 
The old Earth has become a new planet in thee 
discovered, 
I a new person am born, born while I gaze in 
thine eyes ; 
All is seen with new vision and is enrobed in new 
colors. 
Which do not hide or distort, but which reveal 
what is true; 
And at the same time, thee, Elpinike, sweet 
mirror of Nature, 
Thee I behold in thyself while in thee all I be- 
hold. 



ELPINIKE, ' 183 



2. Elpinike's Horror. 

Thou hast read me, O friend thy new poem, — 
replied Elpiuike, 
And translated it too, still I can not under- 
stand ; 
Surely thou wert possessed when writing to-day 
by a spirit 
From thy home far away ; here it belongs not, 
I know. 
For in Hellas we dip each word in the beams of 
Apollo, 
That they illume what they touch while too 
they shine of themselves. 
Look at yon Olive that stands on the edge of 
steep Pappadeia 
Where the cleft descends hundreds of fathoms 
straight down ; 
Over the dismal abyss more than half of the tree 
is inclining, 
While its stubborn roots grapple for help in 
the rocks. 
But the fruit, the fair crop of the branches, drops 
off in the chasm. 
Where it is dark as night, nought can be seen 
from the top ; 
And for man there is no descent, whatever his 
courage, 



184 ELPINIKE. 

Into that depth below — steep as a line in the 
wall ; 
Nor durst any one venture to climb on the limbs 
for the berries, 
Lest the treacherous tree loosen its grasp from 
the brink. 
Thus all its olives are wasted because they fall 
into darkness, 
Yet they are good as the rest, excellent dainties 
would make, 
And they would serve well to nourish the beauti- 
ful voice of the singer 
Who doth sing at the feast hymns full of 
Delphic delight. 
But not a man will descend to that gloom — 
much less will a woman : 
Thus are thy words sometimes, just like those 
olives, my friend. 
For they fall down deep into darkness, said 
Elpinike, 
Whence I can not for my life gather their 
forms or their sense. 
So, let me frankly confess to thy face, were also 
thy verses 
Which thou wert reading just now — olives 
that fell in the gorge. 
They may be good, but so deep they lie that I 
cannot get at them ; 
How I quake to go down into that rayless 
abyss 



ELPINIKE. 185 

Where they are lodged now ! Think, but a woman 
I am, a Greek maiden 
Gloomy depths I avoid — give me my place in 
the sun 
Making the world as cheerful and bright as a 
temple of marble : 
Oh the dark chasms of soul, worse them I hate 
than this gorge ! 



3. In Corinthian Haze. 

Look, O Dearest, awa}^ from this summit down 
into yon valley ! 
There is the mantle of haze spread o'er the 
Olives and plain ; 
From the heights far above, it reaches below to 
the waters 
Of the Corinthian Sea lying in azure re- 
pose. 
Near us light blue is the mountain; deep blue 
it grows in the distance, 
Whilst through the colors so faint. Hell us 
scatters his gold. 
Why, thou askest, was made this haze, and what 
is it good for ? — 
Beautiful merely to be and to delight with its 
hue. 
For it attuneth the soul with its quiet harmonious 
grandeur ; 



186 ELFIN IKE. 

All of it thou must behold, else thou beholdest 
but naught. 
Near by it will not be seen — but away in aerial 
distance 
Canst thou observe its frail form ever refusing 
the touch. 
Here thou canst not say that it is nor point to it 
yonder 
In a particular spot ; still it exists and is 
fair. 
So do I feel when I look on thy beauty, O 
Elpinike, 
I can not say that it lies in thy sweet lips or 
thy cheek 
Or thy forehead; I know thou art fair, I ques- 
tion no further, 
But delight my fond eye viewing the whole of 
thy form. 
I desire not to seek for the deep-hidden reason 
of beauty, 
Lest it should vanish like haze when it is 
sought to be grasped ; 
In thy presence Hose every thought — am trans- 
formed to pure vision ; 
Simply I know thou art fair — what of thee 
more would I know ? 



ELPINIKE. 187 



4. The Delphic Mood. 

Who made the haze and what he made it for, are 
stupid questions, 
Any answer thereto I in my soul do dis- 
dain ; 
Look ! it is one fair color upon this picture of 
Nature 
That is stretched till the sea for the delight of 
us all. 
Not any origin wish I to seek of the beautiful 
object, 
Not any use shall I ask when it before me doth 
lie; 
Simply I try to surrender myself to the waves of 
its beauty, 
There unconsciously float while I am rocked to 
repose. 
Clouds are white, and valleys are green, and 
mountains are mottled, 
Yet they all are but one and they excite but one 

joy- 

Silver-green are the leaves of the Olive, golden 
the sunbeams, 
But the mild haze draws a veil wove of trans- 
parent light blue ; 

In the distance shineth the sea ; beheld through 
this curtain, 



188 ELPINIKE. 

In a calm rapture it lies passing beyond out of 
sight, 
And it speaks to the soul of some tranquil home 
in the future 
That doth rise far away out of the ken of the 
Now, 
Dimly receding in haze, and yet from this summit 
revealed, 
Hinting of worlds that have been, hinting of 
worlds still to be, 
Whither the heart doth turn oftentimes with deep 
aspiration: — 
Hold ! the Olives appear, thither at once let us 

go; 

To this glorious world they belong — I seek not 
another. 
Here is the strain of the Muse, here is the 
rapture of love. 
But above all, thy form is beheld on our Earth, 
Elpinike, 
Round thee now Olives have joined in the gay 
whirl of the dance ; 
See how the tops of the trees in the sunshine 
with light palpitation 
Flutter afar down the mount full of the joy of 
the hour ! 
Under the sport of the leaflets are winding the 
youths of the chorus. 
There is the home of my heart, thither I pass 
through the haze. 



EL FIN IKE. 189 



5. Apollo and Elpinike. 

Often it seemetli to me that Apollo doth play 
with his Delphi, 
Hiding his joyous young face merely for sport 
in the clouds 
For a few moments, till we may see what the 
world is without him, 
Then he throws off the mask, making us laugh 
in his beams. 
Thrice to-day I attempted to stir from the house 
when I saw him 
Out on the mountains above, dancing in glee 
o'er the tops. 
Thither I also wanted to go and join in that 
chorus, 
All of sunbeams composed, over Parnassian 
heights. 
But at once he would dive in a cloud and there 
remain hidden, 
Even some droplets of rain down he would dash 
in my face. 
I, beholding him frown from his darkened throne 
in the heavens. 
Quickly returned to the house, deeming him 
moody the while. 
But as soon as I passed in the door and was 
looking behind me, 



190 ELPINIKE, 

ShiniDg he was again — laughing aloud at my 
fright. 
So three times to-day he has acted, — so, 
Elpinike, 
Thou hast acted to-day, Delphian child of the 
God. 
For thou hast told the story, so pitiful, of thy 
misfortunes. 
That I was ready to weep, when just behind in 
thine eyes 
I beheld the faint twinkle of smiles pursuing 
each other, 
So that I answered their laugh right in thy 
mirror of tears. 
'Tis thy delight to make me afraid with thy frown 
for a moment. 
But the cloud in thy face breaks into dimples 
of joy. 



6. The Old Temple Seen. 

Wretched hovels now hold the high site of 
Apollo's great temple. 
Yet some walls can be seen which of the past 
try to tell ; 
But no more we behold the smooth white embrace 
of the columns 
Round the cell of the God which his clear spirit 
indwelt ; 



ELPINIKE. 191 

And the front of the temple is gone, the far- 
shining forehead, 
Where in sculpture were read deeds of the God 
in his might; 
Also the frieze, the soft fillet around the head of 
the structure, 
Telling a story of old in a low hymn writ of 
stone, 
Has been lost from Delphi along with thousands 
of marbles. 
Singing each one some strain to the Great Man 
or the God. — 
No, these words are not true, for I saw ere while 
the old temple : 
I can the secret impart how thou canst see it as 
well. 
I was down in the valley where sports the or- 
chard of Olives, 
Elpinike was there — stood at my side as I 
looked, 
And she lent me her beautiful eyes, her soul too 
she lent me. 
Bade me upward to glance where was the Del- 
phian town ; 
Through a long verdant view enchased by the 
weft of the branches 
The old temple I saw rise once again in its 
pride ; 
Thither the leaves made a framework of grace 
fullest lines for its splendor. 



192 ELPINIKE. 

Through them the marble upsprang gleaming 
anew from the hill, 
Just as fair Elpinike began in her smiles to en- 
wrap me, 
And as I felt her mild breath freighted with 
words from her soul. 
I looked up through the twigs and the leaves and 
beheld ancient Delphi 
Filled with beauty and light, moving to meas- 
ures of hymns. 



7. Carpe Diem. 

Out on the slant of the hill-side lies the old 
Delphian graveyard: 
By it oft I must pass when to the Olives I 

go; 

Ancient coffins of stone through the fields in dis- 
order are scattered : 
Some are just brokeu in twain struck by a single 
rude blow, 
Others have had many blows from the ages and 
crumbled to fragments, 
Still a few have remained whole in the tempest 
of time. 
But they all are now empty where once were laid 
the dear bodies, 
Laid with many a tear in the thick casket of 
rock, 



ELPINIKE. 193 

Strong enough to preserve what it held in its 
chamber forever : 
But not e'en ashes are here speaking of life 
and its sleep. 
How I would like to behold some one of the 
shapes in its splendor 
Eise now out of this stone, in a new Delphian 
birth, 
And with the flow of the folds sweep there 
through the Halls of Apollo.. 
Mid the high columns that shine us in the days 
of the God ! 
But the fair body has perished in spite of the 
strength of the fortress ; 
So Elpinike thou too must by dark Death be 
entombed. 
But let us fly from the thought — let us hurry 
away to the Olives : 
There dark Acheron's stream dries in the 
sheen of the leaves, 
There are the happy domains of Eros illumed by 
the sunbeams, 
There let us know what is love, yielding to 
honeyed caress 
While the Hours still lend us their wings and be- 
dew the sweet senses: 
For I feel sorely afraid, love m:iy not be after 
death ; 
Eros, the gladsome, flees from the gloomy regard 
of grim Pluto, 

13 



194 ELPINIKE. 

But the Olives he seeks sporting his wings in 
the trees ; 
Nor will the li^ht-darter Phoebus descend to the 
realm of Hades, 
Only over the Earth hovers his gold-dropping 
car. 



8. Seismos. 

Didst thou notice just now that rattle of sash at 
the window? 
On its hinge turned the door, yet at the sill was 
no guest. 
Also the pan on the fire slightly tipped, and in it 
the water 
Quivered from some hidden touch with rapid 
shudders of fear. 
List ! a low heavy rumble that rolls far away in 
the distance — 
Then it dies with a gasp, in a faint mutter of 
wrath ; 
Pray, what is it? — To thee I shall tell the truth 
undistorted, 
Though I love not to think what I now feel I 
must speak ; 
But thou must know what is here. It was Seismos 
the God of the Earthquake, 
Who just turned on his side in a wild frenzy of 
dreams ; 



ELPINIKE. 195 

For he is still here beneath us, and often he gives 
us a warning 
That he feverish is, restless for deeper re- 
venge. 
When he turns in his bed, he rumples the earth 
like a cover: 
Just at present he sleeps under this quilt of the 
ground, 
And in his dream he grasps it and wrinkles it oft 
till it tremble : 
Rigid Parnassian tops roll like the waves of the 
sea, 
And the rock-pillared plane of the earth at his 
touch is as water ; 
Its deep billows' low roar was the dull sound 
thou hast heard. 
Once, it is said, long ago he in person rose up 
from this mountain, 
Huge was his visage of stone, wrinkled with 
many a rift. 
Mighty the brawn of his arm, his leg had the tot- 
ter of hill-tops: 
Round him a barbarous blast sv/ept from the 
wilds of the North, 
Temples were sunk in the earth, tho Gods disap- 
peared in the tempest. 
Since then our Delphi has been nought but the 
film of a dream. 
Even my days — said she — reach back to a year 
when he smote us. 



196 ELPINIKE. 

All of US fled from our homes , many he drag- 
ged to his cave. 
Since this spell of his ire, he feverish sleeps in 
his chamber, 
Still again he will rise, for in his heart he is 
wroth, 
Wroth at our Delphian God and wroth at our 
Delphian sunshine, 
Both he would sink into night where he has 
sway mid the rocks. — 
Elpinike, where is thy basket? cease thy fore- 
boding, 
Glorious Apollo has come, peering just out of 
the clouds ; 
Wait till Seismos arrive of himself, do not bring 
him beforehand; 
Down to the Olives haste, great will the crop 
be to-day. 



9. The Foe of Delphi. 

See this rock that is lying here in the midst of 
the village ; 
'Tis as large as a house, rugged and sharp are 
its sides. 
Surly and ugly it lies, crouched down in the street 
like a watch-dog 
That will not stir from his place however much 
we may coax. 



ELFINIRE. 197 

So WO all, when we enter our hamlet, have to go 
round it ; 
Graze but the edges of flint, see, you are bitten 
by fangs. 
Whence the intruder, you ask? Look upward to 
yon craggy summit 
Overhanging the town, thence you will see it 
was broke; 
For the rift is still fresh at the point where the 
cliff was sundered, 
And this fragment would fit were it but placed 
on that break: 
Now with its mass of huge ruin it stops up the 
entrance to Delphi 
For the stranger who seeks in his long journey 
our town. 
But for us dwellers it is a dark threat as well as 
a hindrance J 
Hinting of chaos and death which were once 
rolled from the steep — 
Hither hurled by a God, by the dark-minded, 
rough-handed Seismos, 
Down on the hamlet in sleep at the still middle 
of night. 
That dire moment, O friend, I still can distinctly 
remember, 
As my father me clasped from the soft rugs 
where I lay 
Wrapped in the folds of sweet slumber and 
cradled by beautiful visions : 



198 ELPINIKE, 

Quickly he bore me away, naked and bruised 
in limb. 
Up to that time I had lived an harmonious sport 
of existence, 
Now my life lies in twain, cleft by a horrible 
hour. — 
Thus Elpinike was speaking as she came out of 
the Olives, 
And with a shudder she brushed past the rough 
rock in the path. 
Certain it is that barbarous Seismos was angry at 
Delphi, 
Seeking to whelm the whole town into his 
rocky domains; 
The broad earth there surged like a wave or 
whirled like an eddy, 
Mountains quivered above smit by the hand of 
the God ; 
To and fro like a pendulum swung he lofty 
Phloumbouki, 
Crags he tore off in his wrath, hurling them 
down on the roofs. 
Fifty people were lost then, but the Greek 
maiden was rescued, 
Elpinike was saved, dowered with beauty di- 
vine; 
Even Seismos, the brute, with rapture was seized, 
or with pity 
At her beauty's distress, letting her flee from 
his grasp. 



ELPINIKE. 199 

Now I tremble with terror and love as I think of 
her danger, 
And with a fervor more deep to my embrace 
her I clasp ; 
Temples are buried, houses are crushed, whole 
peoples have perished — 
But the Greek maiden survives, fair Elpinike 
still lives ; 
And when the morn has touched her soft eye 
with its finger of roses, 
Down to the Olives she speeds, singing a hymn 
on her way ; 
The glad stream of her notes I wander along to 
the well-head, 
Beakers of pearls there I dip out of the foun- 
tain of song. 



10. Castalia's Captivity. 

Many the deeds of wickedness that are recorded 

of Seismos ; 
But the one which is worst I shall relate to 

thee now — 
He attempted to ravish Castalia. Under her 

fountain 
All the fast earth he quaked, sought to break 

up to her bed. 
And to bear her away as once Proserpine from 

Enna 



200 ELPINIKE. 

Was borne off by a God to the Tartarean 
realm. 
But our good mother Earth was firm and refused 
him a passage, 
Nor to his blows did she yield though she was 
sorely assailed. 
Raging he filled the fair lap of the Nymph with 
stones from the mountain, 
Hurled from the summit above, till she was lost 
to the sight. 
Then she was clasped in the arms of Seismos, of 
rock-hearted Seismos : 
Still her low wail we heard while her clear tears 
bubbled out, 
So that we knew where she was, revealed by the 
sigh of her waters. 
And we rescued her thence when the old brute 
fell asleep. 
Still she is fair as she rests in her bed, though 
bruised by the Titan, 
And a low music she makes with her trans- 
parent sweet song, 
When on the pebbles she dances away down into 
the valley 
Where the Olives are seen — thither she hies 
with her stream. 



ELPINIKE. 201 



II. The Lost Old World Regained. 

Still I am pained when I think how many a beau- 
tiful maiden 
In that convulsion was lost — lost to us all 
evermore . 
Oh ! the fair forms that lie in the cold embraces 
of Seismos, 
That would trance the eye as they proceed to 
the dance, 
Festively dressed in white linen robes of grace- 
fullest flexure, 
Moving in concord their limbs to the soft 
waving of sounds, 
Fragrantly breathed on by Muses from near 
Parnassian summits — 
One harmonious voice they would become in 
the soul. 
Little use can it be to seek for them since the 
dark giant 
lias devoured their forms or has them bitten 
to shreds. 
Even those whom after long labor we rescued, 
were mangled 
By his rude hand of rock till but a fragment 
they lay. 
But they are gone from our view, buried deep in 
the caverns of Seismos, 



202 ELPINIKE, 

Lost to Apollo's abode, temple of beauty and 
light. 
Who would not weep for them ? — Hold thy kind- 
red tears, Elpinike; 
Thou dost remain on our earth, still too the 
Olives remain; 
Thy bright eyes now reflect all that ever was lost 
in fair Hellas, 
In thee I see all its maids, Helen herself I be- 
hold. 
One is enough, I tell thee, one is far better than 
many — 
If only thee I can win, then I have won in 
thee all. 



Cgtkt Jfflitrtlj. 

I. Immortality. 

Calmly has Phoebus laid down his bright shield 
on the top of the mountain, 
As in the West he descends, clad in his armor 
of gold; 
Now he commences to cast off his mail for a 
plunge in the ocean, 
Like a warrior on high, weary with spoils of 
the day; 
Radiant Delphi he leaves for a time and bright 
Elpinike, 
While the afternoon sheen slowly is swooning 
to eve. 
Hark ! there rises a sullen low moan from the 
tops of the Olives : 
People are beating the fruit down with a piti- 
less rod. 

(203) 



204 ELFINIKE, 

So the hapless young trees must surrender the 
stores of their branches, 
Scourged by the hand of harsh fate, stript of 
their glory and pride. 
Many a leaf in a slow, sad whirl to the ground 
now is falling. 
Quits unwilling the twig where it could sport 
all the day. 
Many a branch, too, full of fresh juices and ten- 
der, is broken 
By the rude blows that fall on tho bright head 
of the tree. 
Even the limbs are lopped by the knife and 
borne to the village. 
Where in the hearth they are cast, quickly to 
ashes are burnt. 
So there remains of the merry new dance that 
took place in the tree-tops, 
Nought but the dust of the pyre that in the 
chimney is left. 
As I walk through the trees of the orchard, a 
tear will keep dropping 
When I think of the fate which my young 
Olives once smote. 
Nor can I tell what there is in the air of to-day 
that affects me; 
Always I melt at some view, joining fair youth 
to decay. 
What are these fragments of stone? A sarco- 
phagus, broken to pieces, 



ELPINIKE. 205 

Which I stumble against as they lie strown in 
my path. 
Here mid the fallen green branches and leaves 
is the hollow stone casket 
Where a young body once lay, torn from its 
parents' fond arms ; 
And in the midst of the Olives, under the sport of 
the leaflets, 
Urns were once placed in the rock, holding 
sweet youth and its love. 
But the stone still remains, though long since 
has perished the treasure, 
Fate refuses return by an unchanging 
decree ; 
Nor is Nature, methinks, to her children wholly 
impartial, 
Some she recalls to her breast, others forever 
she spurns. 
Seasons depart and return with delight to the 
Delphian hill- side. 
Disappear for a time but are restored with new 
birth ; 
High Parnassus, propped on its pillars, knows no 
mutation. 
Though for the summer it change merely its 
vestment of snow ; 
Ever green are the pines that slope down the sides 
of the mountain. 
While the leaf of the bush hints, when it falls, 
the new bud ; 



206 ELPINIKE. 

Still too Castalia is here — the perennial musical 
runnel, 
Singing the same happy strain heard by the 
poets of old ; 
But, ah youth, the fairest, loveliest blossom of 
Nature 
Passes away at its bloom by irreversible 
law; 
Man, the top of creation, decays, and soon drops 
into ashes — 
Flung by time on the earth as a mere handful 
of dust. 
What is fairest must die, its place is soon filled 
by another, 
While there endures the rude rock ages on ages 
the same. 
Thus have perished the youths and thus have 
perished the Olives, 
But not thus shall I die, if my behest be 
obeyed ; 
For a testament I have bequeathed with the 
single provision: 
Plant a young Olive or two over my grave by 
the rill ; 
Then I cannot but think I shall wake to the joy 
of the leaflets. 
As I lie in repose under my blanket of 
earth ; 
Or if I sleep, I shall dream once more the sweet 
dreams of my lifetime. 



ELPINIKE. 207 

When I roamed through the trees, sporting 
with image and song. 
But the Olive there planted, I know, will rejoice 
to spread o'er me, 
Through the soil it will send rootlets to 
wreathe me in love ; 
With the sap I shall rise, and the tree I shall 
render immortal. 
For my deathless soul I shall irabreathe in the 
leaves ; 
There they forever will sport in the golden 
network of sunbeams. 
Just as I saw them of old as I lay down by the 
stream . 



2. Renascence. 

True it is, Elpinike, of me, thou faithful ob- 
server — 
What thou hast said with a laugh, I must con- 
fess with a sigh : 
Silvery hairs have begun to intrude on the slant 
of my temples, 
With their dark comrades they stay winding in 
subtle embrace ; 
Nor can they be any longer expelled by the hand 
of rude power, 
For their sum is too great, so they defiant 
remain. 



208 ELPINIKE. 

Many a wrinkle has furrowed deeply the field of 
my forehead, 
Running aslant and across — marks by my life 
branded there; 
Many a channel spreads out like a fan from the 
lake of my eyelids, 
Passages cut through my cheeks by the fierce 
tempest and flood; 
Often, I tell thee, have they been filled with hot 
torrents of soriow 
When the dark cloud of fate burst on my head 
from above. 
Never again will these channels be smoothed from 
my visage, oh never ! 
Like the fair rose of youth which I behold in 
thy face; 
Worn too deep in the storm they have been to be 
now leveled over. 
Traces will always remain where the wild cur- 
rent once swept. 
Still, Elpinike, like thee I shall bloom in spite of 
my body. 
Richer shall be, too, the yield from the deep 
furrows of life. 
Golden forever the stream shall flow through the 
tear-riven channel, 
E'en from the wounds of the tree buds shall 
burst forth to the sun. 
For the glow of thy youth I shall hand thee sweet 
draughts of my fancy, 



ELFINIKE. 209 

And for the flash of thine eyes see nie throw 
sparkles of words ; 
With the red morn in thy cheek I shall mingle 
the gold of my evening, 
And with thy youthful embrace now I shall 
match a young dream. 
For my soul's latest garland exchangcthy body's 
sweet poem, — 
I too fresh flowers shall wreathe while there is 
life in this frame, 
Know that age is transformed into youth by Love 
and the Muses, 
And though Time crisp the flesh, Poesy blos- 
soms eterne. 
Look at this aged Olive beneath which now we 
are sitting, 
Centuries long have sought vainly to blast its 
young life. 
Twisted and knotted and bent it has been by the 
winds and the tempests, 
E'en full of holes is the trunk ; hark ! it is hol- 
low within. 
Here it was cruelly struck by an axe in the hands 
of a peasant. 
There a branch it once lost, dearer, methinks, 
than itself; 
Nay, it has once been rifted in twain from the 
top to the bottom 
In some violent storm sent from above by the 
Gods. 

14 



210 ELPINIKE. 

Still it is o^ivino; forth branches and shoots from 
its body so shattered, 
E'en on its scars you may see sprouts leaping 
out of the bark, 
And it buries its wounds in an overgrowth smooth 
of new tissue. 
Still their place can be told by the fiesh rind 
and the buds. 
Youthful its head of silver-green leaves rises up 
in the orchard, 
ISlo one would think of its age, were the old 
trunk not beheld. 
Every branch too is ladeu above with a rich crop 
of olives ; 
Far more it bears of the fruit than the young 
tree in the soil ; 
For out of each ancient fibre of wood shoots up- 
ward a sapling. 
Till around the hoar stem dances a cluster of 
youths 
With the thousandfold laugh of the leaves and 
the limbs on the hill-side : 
'Tis a hymn you would say, sung by Parnassian 
choirs. 
Tree of the Muses, thyself into youth eternally 
changing, 
Even thy age is the soil in which is nourished 
thy bloom, 
And the older thou growest, and the more wrink- 
led thy body. 



ELFIN IKE. 211 

The more sprouts seem to spring from the 
rich fibre of years. 
Such may I be — age into youth forever trans- 
forming, 

Till the old trunk when it falls shall be borne 
off to the pyre. 



3. The Last Words of Apollo. 

Not every day does Apollo smile on the hill-side 
of Delphi, 
But he covers his face in the dark folds of the 
clouds ; 
For he has two garments — the white one of 
youth and of radiance, 
And another one grained in the deep colors of 
night. 
From the second he shakes out the showers and 
sprinkles the Olives : 
Then I am driven to roof, while Elpinike re- 
mains 
Out in the storm at her work, and sings to the 
fall of the raindrops 
Melodies sweet of her soul, though all the 
Olives be wet. 
There in the cabin I couch on a rug alongside of 
the fireplace. 
Look at the blaze and think — think of the 
maid in the rain. 



212 ELPINIKE. 

But as I sit there alone, Apollo rises within 
me 
Bright is the form of the God, mildly serene is 
his glance. 
Proud is the lip though and high is the tread of 
the slayer of Python, 
And from his body divine sparkles ambrosial 
youth. 
Of a sudden each hidden dark chamber within me 
is lighted, 
And a new sunrise I have all to myself in the 
hut. 
Thus he to me familiarly talks in tones of fair 
promise ; 
'* Though unseen by thine eye, do not suppose 
I am lost ; 
For I oft leave the sky to rise in the hearts of 
my people. 
Often I change my abode here from without to 
within. 
He knoweth not my true worship who can not 
carry my sunshine 
Through the time of dark days that I insert in 
the bright ; 
For the world I have built out of layers of clouds 
and of sunlight, 
Although man I have made only of beams, if 
he will. 
Often the heavens must darken and tempests 
will bury my visage. 



ELPINIKE. 213 

But my boon thou hast not till thou art Phoebus 

thyself. 
Look now under the Olives, thine own Elpinike 

is busy 
In the fierce rain, still she sings — sings in the 

storm of her love. 
She my true worshiper is, for she bears my 

face in her bosom. 
So that wherever she stays, there I am shining 

all clay." 



4. The Outlook. 

The last evening it was that I saw Elpinike at 
Delphi : 
Softly her words in mine ear throbbed the low 
strain of a hymn 
After I had come home and lain down on my 
rugs at the hearthstone : 
There I lay do¥/n by myself, filled with her 
musical speech. 
Always my thoughts were lingering over her 
tones and her glances, 
Till by degress I had strayed into the realm of 
the dream; 
Then each wandering fancy was buoyed with the 
wish of my waking. 
And each hope of my heart turned at its birth 
to be true ; 



214 ELPINIKE. 

Every image in sleep was full of the glimpses of 
daytime, 
And what I thought of awake, changed to a 
vision by night. 
For I dreamed I had borne far away divine 
Elpinike, 
Out of her bright Greek home over the breadth 
of the sea ; 
So impassioned had I become in the spell of her 
beauty 
That the Delphian rocks could I without her 
not leave. 
Then I led the Parnassian queen along in my 
journey. 
Joyous we turned from the Dawn glimmering 
faint on the heights. 
Toward the Evenino^ we fled on the fire-wino^ed 
chariot of Hesper, 
Where are the garden and trees hanging with 
apples of gold, 
Which long ago were by Poets beheld from top 
of Parnassus, 
Like an island of dreams floating Olympian 
fruits, 
As it lay far off in the West mid the sheen of 
Apollo : 
Now the presage is true and Elpinike has 
come. 
There in my land by the sunset I built her a 
home, a new temple. 



ELPINIKE. 215 

That she might have an abode lit for a God- 
dess of old ; 
And I built it of whitest and purest of far-glanc- 
ing marble, 
Round it I drew a bright frieze leaping with 
forms of the feast, 
While the roof was supported by many a glisten- 
ing column; 
Many a sculpture I placed in the fair hall of 
the fane. 
In the beams of the sun how merry the dance of 
the marbles ! 
The whole temple did dance as with new lustre 
it rose. 
There it stood on the banks that hold the great 
Father of Waters, 
Monster huge of the West — tawny the flow of 
his mane — 
Ever leaping along down his deep-delved path to 
the sea-caves 
Where he doth rest from his race mid his 
sleek dolphins and calves. 
Smeared is his face with the clay of each land 
that he laves in his passage, 
Cloudy with turmoil his brow as he defiantly 
rolls. 
Rearing his head from the stream, he shakes his 
muddy old chaplet, 
In some anger he seems ever to hurry 
along. 



211) ELPINIKE. 

Hitherto he is said to have been the terror of 
Muses, 
And they have fled from his banks, shrieking 
in fear or disgust. 
Still there boldly I built a Greek fane to mine 
own Elpinike, 
And I installed her within, that of my house 
she be queen. 
Joyous and faithful she sped with me over the 
continents mighty, 
Over the ocean she passed, neither she flinched 
nor she tired ; 
Soon a new Hellas she found, and a new Parnas- 
sian garden 
Filled with the frao^rance of flowers grown in 
Apollo's domain. 
There she was happy — and in her new home by 
the side of the River 
Always her glances serene tokened her love- 
liest mood; 
Robed too she was in the folds ; when she moved 
through the mansion of marble, 
Graces followed her train, strewing their wealth 
as she passed; 
And on the shore where raged that turbulent God 
of the River 
Oft she attuned the sweet hymn, calming 
the wrath of the wave; 
Filled was her strain of delight with the ancient 
Delphian measures, 



ELPINIKE. 217 

That Castalia had throbbed fiom her clear 
source long ago, 
As she went dancing adown the green hill through 
the orchard and vineyard, 
Winding in choruses bright, garlands of maid- 
ens and youths. 
But a cry fell into my dream so loud I still can 
remember, 
** O Elpinike, stay! why wilt thou flee from 
my side?" 
As I woke I caught stray notes of a vanishing 
music : 
Farewell, ye Olives, and hills ! farewell, O 
Delphian days I 



NOTE. 

It has been repeatedly suggested by friends that I 
ought to append to the present book some account of 
its origin, with an explanation of the locality in which 
its incidents are placed. My answer usually has been 
that those who wish any further description of Delphi 
can find the details in my Walk in Hellas, and in the 
writings of travelers on Greece. 

Still I may now be permitted to take advantage of 
this reprint of the book in order to add a note here out 
of the way, at a point which only the most persistent 
reader will ever reach, unless he skips. At the present 
time there is a new interest in Delphi from the fact 
that the old town may be soon brought to light by ex- 
cavation, which, we all hope, will be the work of the 
American Archaeological Institute. My most persist- 
ent reader — I only dare speak of him in the singular — 
may be interested in hearing a word concerning this 
})ook, which is itself a sort of poetic excavation of 
antiquity. 

It w^as written on Delphic ground during the winter 
and spring of 1879, in the midst of the scenery which 
it attempts to describe and to fill with the antique 
spirit of tlie place. At that time I passed several 
months in the Parnassian region, and the unforeseen, 
but perhaps natural, result was these poems. 

After I had returned, home, they were printed in St. 
Louis the following year (1880), though the book was 
never pubhshed. A local bookseller permitted his 
name to appear on the title page, in the publisher's 
place, but he had nothing to do with publication. 
Five hundred copies were printed, of which a large 
portion perished in a fire at the bindery. Of the rest, 
(219) 



220 NOTE. 

some were sold, but the most were given away ; a few 
wandered into the hands of reviewers, through whom 
the book received a little notice in the public press. 
Also two or three friends took the trouble to write and 
to print articles calling attention to the poems. 

All this seems long ago now (1891). After the lapse 
of a dozen years — quite a large fragment of a human 
life — I have gone back to the book and tried to live over 
its experience anew, by means of reading and recollec- 
tion. In this state of mind, I have subjected it to a 
thorough re\ision, and have made a good many small cor- 
rections, of which the book had always stood in need. 
But there has been no attempt to re-write it, or seri- 
ously alter its character ; the little Delphic brook re- 
mains what it was, only some unsightly weeds have 
been removed from the clear flow of the stream. 

'J'hus the book has been given a new chance to make 
its way in the world. I may say that it has always had 
a small quiet life in the hearts of its friends, a life 
quite removed from the busy whirl of the time's litera- 
ture. Thus its existence has been somewhat like that 
which it has described, a Delphic existence, with an 
idyllic repose in a secluded nook. Probably such will 
always be the life of this book, in deep accord with its 
character. Still the friends just mentioned continue 
to speak of it, and thus provoke some inquiry for it by 
their comments in private conversation. This demand, 
though neither loud nor strong, it is always worth an 
author's while to satisfy; here lies his reward, if he is 
to have any reward. 

Still I doubt if I had re-printed this book, if another 
purpose had not urged me. The period has arrived 
Yv^hen it is reasonable in every man to bring together 
the scattered results of the labor of a life-time, and 
especially, to give to the children of his brain their 
earthly inheritance, as far as he has any to give. 
Delphic Days is one of the products of a love for class- 
ical antiquity, and a continued intercourse with its 
spirit. The book forms an integral part of a series of 
works which have sprung up along the furrows of tlie 



NOTE. 221 

workman's life, and which seek to transfuse what is 
best of Hellenic spirit into our Western world, as well 
as to embody the same in a human experience. These 
works, which are at least an attempt to free classicism 
of pedantry and to make it live afresh, are now to be 
collected and published. Delphic Days is a link, I 
must believe, a necessary link in the chain. 

It need hardly be said that these effusions bubbled 
out on the spot, with no violence on my part, as far as 
I am aware. They were written in immediate view of 
the scenes, under olive trees, at the fountain's side, on 
the mountain tops. Their direct source was not books, 
but Greek Nature and Life, as they stood before my 
e3'es for months. Undoubtedly antiquity continually 
plays into the modern landscape, and colors it. This 
interfusion of the old and the new is probably what 
gives the main tone of the book. Still I would have 
the reader remember that these poems were not com- 
posed in a library with shelves full of Greek and Latin 
authors, but in the open air of Delphi, mid breezes 
fresh from Parnassus just above me. 

A new and lasting experience in life was that stay 
in the Delphic world — a world so small and so primi- 
tive, yet so complete and self-contained, at the same 
time so full of ancient recollections. Once in it, I 
could not soon leave it ; and when I did leave it after 
several weeks' sojourn, I had to go back to it, before 
quitting Greece finally. To me that spot was the 
jewel of the whole European journey. Oldest Hellas — 
not the Athenian and historic, but the Homeric and 
pre-historic — seemed there to rise suddenly to life in 
the present, and to take hold of the senses, the heart 
and the imagination. Nature gave a setting of grand- 
eur, over which Memory played with all her magic. 

To the well disposed reader I may be permitted to 
give a hint or point of view, from which I would like 
him to consider the book. As I now look back at it 
through so many years, 1 think I can judge of it as 
something which is removed from me into the distance. 
I may, accordingly, make the statement, that, while it 



222 NOTE. 

consists of detached pieces written in various moods, 
it is nevertheless one in spirit, and portrays a Whole — 
this Whole being the little idylhc world of Delphi. 
The poems, therefore, are not to be taken separately', 
in the final judgment of the work, but as parts of the 
totality. The question which must be put to them, at 
last, is. Do they, taken together, portray a world? 
Each poem has, or ought to have its own little light, but 
it must receive its chief illumination from the whole of 
them. In form, the work is lyrical, not mythical ; 
that is, it has no story to hold its parts together, and 
to keep the stream of interest flowing in the channel of 
narration ; its bond is more impalpable, and lies en- 
tirely in the spirit common to them all. At the same time 
the poems ought to show their outer visible scene, and 
leave in the reader a complete picture of this Delphic 
world. 

Now a few words in regard to the meter, to which 
objection is sometimes made. I can only say that this 
too came of itself. The elegiac distich, in which the 
poems are written, had no meauing for me till I 
touched classic soil. I had read this meter in the 
Greek and Latin poets, but without anj^ inner sense of 
it, in spite of the rules of scansion. As far as I could 
see or feel, it had no necessity of being just so an 1 
not otherwise ; it corresponded to no music or rhythm 
within me, or in the world. It was an artilicial knack, 
and not an art; it might just as well, or even better, 
have been some otlier metrical form. The best mod- 
ern reproduction of this measure is, doubtless, to be 
found in Goethe ; not the most accurate, still the best 
reproduction. But Goethe too had left me uncertain 
and uninitiated. All this, however, changed after a 
short stay in Rome. There both Nature and Mind 
began without effort to clothe themselves in the present 
rhythmical garb. I do not now recollect the exact mo- 
ment of my Eoman visit when this metrical spirit took 
possession ; before I was aware, it was installed and 
at work. Again the Roman Elegiac poets were read 
with new meaning and dehght ; the Greek Anthology 



NOTE. 223 

brought all its honey in thousands of little cells fash- 
ioned after the pattern of this raeter ; Goethe's Elegies 
were ])ored over with fresh inspiration, and found to 
be better than their classic originals. Such was my 
Roman experience in the present matter; the journey 
to Delphi came later, but kept time to the same meas- 
ure. 

The metrical tendency, which has been above indi- 
cated, retained its hold on me as long as I remained in 
classic lands ; it did not let go at once after I had 
come home ; even now it sometimes haunts me. But 
in Italy and Greece, the hills and the valleys, the winds 
and the waves took shape and moved to this measure ; 
the life of the people, their manners, their thoughts 
and actions had some subtle attunement to it ; the 
palaces, the temples, the monuments seemed to have 
been bnilt to its beat. Even the gait of the traveler 
in classical lands keeps in a kind of rhythm to this 
classical music ; his images rise and move in harmony 
with it ; his words of necessity drop into the same 
cadence. 

Some such experience ever^-body has who goes to 
Italy and enjo3'sit, for this enjoyment is a musical 
attunement of the soul to the land. In fact, every 
age, every people, every great deed of man and every 
grand object of nature has its own measure, its own 
metrical expression flowing from the heart of it, and 
attuning the ear which can hear. Greece, Rome, En- 
gland, Marathon, Gettysburg, each has its special 
musical beat ; the forest, the ocean, Niagara, all have 
it too, ready to give it to the man who can seize it and 
put it into language. Just here lies the function of 
the poet. This measured movement of tl;e thing itself 
he must catch, and make the movement of his poem ; 
such is the only true meter. Its undulations must 
flow out of the soul of the theme, and not be fastened 
upon the same from the outside. All nice adjustment 
of feet and syllables, of vowels and consonants, never 
touches the source of genuine versification. Of course 
we must reach the outposts of prosody by counting 



224 NOTE. 

feet and syllables ; but the heart of the fortress is not 
taken by storming an outpost. Nothing is plainer than 
that the great poets are neither smooth nor regular 
versifiers ; still they are true, true to the thing to be 
sung about, and this should be the supreme object with 
every singer, great or small. 

A few prosodical remarks, however, may be helpful 
to some readers. The meter in which the book is 
written is named the elegiac, and is composed of the 
hexameter and the pentameter, so called, though the 
latter also has six beats. The two lines together con- 
stitute the distich, which is the fundamental metrical 
norm, since its repetition runs through the poem. 
The distich has a certain completeness in itself, quite 
as much as the rhymed couplet in English. The 
second line of the distich (pentameter) falls into two 
equal parts, separated by a strong caesural pause: 

H^ld in a h;fmn of the God, || thither I pass to his shrine. 

The effect of this metrical scheme is to give a very 
emphatic ending to the distich : one might almost say, 
it has a double ending. Herein lies its chief difference 
from the hexameter, which runs on, line after line, with- 
out being held up in any sncU emphatic way, and hence 
is better adapted to continuous narration. It is manifest 
that the elegiac distich grew out of the hexameter, out 
of the need of breaking up the Homeric continuity, and 
of marking more strongly the single thought or image. 
The distich in its very form hints the transition from 
the epical to the tyrical, from the narrative to the re- 
flective manner. The grand hexametral organism of 
Homer broke up into its elegiac units ; thus the metri- 
cal change images, to a certain extent, the political 
and social change in Greece after the time of its great- 
est poet. 

Still the hexameter exists in the elegiac distich, is, 
in fact, the little longer half of it. This hexameter, as 
reproduced in English, has met with violent opposition. 
Mr. Spedding the critic, Mr. Swinburne the poet, and 
Lord Derby, the translator of Homer, with others, have 



NOTE. 225 

strongly condemned its use. It has been pronounced 
an acknowledged failure. "Who acknowledged such 
failure ? Longfellow is not far from being the most 
popular English-speaking poet of the last two genera- 
tions ; Evangeline and Miles Standitih^ written in 
hexameters, are not far from being the most popular 
of the larger poems of Longfellow. Where is the 
failure? Clough's Tdber na VuoUcli and Kingsley's 
Andromeda do not indicate failure. Of course, there 
can be poor hexameters, as there can be poor blank- 
verse, or poor prose. 

The trouble does not lie, then, in the English lan- 
guage, as is sometimes claimed ; it lies in the man who 
uses the English language. The unperverted ear will 
take the hexameter in our tongue, as anybody can 
easily discover by testing the matter. But the person 
who reads the English hexameter with Greek and Latin 
scansion in his head is lost, because he has a false 
standard. Then comes classic pedantry; how much 
will not that account for ! Into its wilderness we can- 
not possibly enter. 

The attempt here is to employ the free hexameter, 
free from classic pedantry, yet adhering to the hex- 
ametral norm. There must be freedom in its employ- 
ment, but not license ; there must also be law but 
not servitude. To unite harmoniously freedom and 
law is as necessary in a metrical as in a political 
organism. 

In Germany, the battle over the strict and the free 
construction of the hexameter has been going on for a 
century. Two of Germany's most distinguished poets, 
Voss and Goethe, have been the exemplars, if not the 
leaders of the two tendencies. The translation of 
Homer by Voss in hexameters, is a marvelous, but 
artificial product ; very few readers in these days will 
think that it has much genuine Homeric life. But 
Goethe's hexameters, though freely constructed, are 
instinct with poetic vitality ; on the whole, they are 
the best since those of Homer. They are not so elegant 
as some which the Latin poets have written, but they 



226 NOTE. 

have more life. Voss satirized the metrical freedoms 
of Goethe and Schiller, in a distich: 

In Weimar und Jena macht man Hexameter, wie der; 
Aber die Pentameter sind doch noch excellent^r. 

Voss was justified in seeking to curb metrical ex- 
cesses ; still the Weimar poets were right in the deeper 
sense, for they united metrical freedom with the ob- 
servance of the lawo As far as I can see, the literary 
judgment of the world has set its seal upon the work 
of the Weimar poets ; there is a consensus of the com- 
petent in their favor. 

Rules, however, the best rules can give only an 
external help in versification. The exact point at 
which freedom becomes license, or law becomes tyran- 
ny, must be left at last to good taste and sound judg- 
ment. Even then people of good taste and sound 
judgment will differ about some cases. 

Finally, I shall revert to what I said before: the 
meter must be felt to proceed from the thing itself, and 
not to be made by the poet, and applied from the out- 
side. He must be gifted with an inner ear that can 
catch the true measure of the object which he portrays. 
In the present case, the question must be. Does the 
Delphic world itself give the beat of the measure 
here employed and move to the same by its own mu- 
sical nature? If not, then the verse drops down to 
mere classical reminiscence and imitation — perchance 
lower. 



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